Have you ever been so wrapped up in your own little world that you feel like you missed something? I had just this feeling on a recent flight. So, I stopped writing, closed my MacBook, took my ear buds out and had an hour long conversation with the woman sitting next to me.
Social media is real, but I’ll take a conversation face to face with another carbon based life form over Twitter every time. The presentation, blog post or proposal I was working on would keep.
Nancy and I talked about business, families, kids, spouses, cooking, wine, parents – you get the picture, we talked about life. It was a nice break in the middle of a “me centered” week. A reconnection with the human me vs the machine that lives and functions a week at a time on the road.
So, next time you get that feeling that you’re missing something – stop and take a look around. That someone or something may be as close as the airplane seat or coffee shop table next to you.
I go through a similar choice all the time while running. There are times when my run includes glancing at my GPS watch every few minutes and loud music piping into my ears from my ipod. And then, most of the time, I just want to get out there and hear my own breathing, my own footsteps, and watch the world go by at my own pace. Kind of similar to how I can drown myself in technology and forget about the people around me. I’m glued to my computer, attached to my phone. I’ll watch for this. Thanks for the reminder Jim. I’m glad you could make a connection.
Anne,
Love the imagery of footsteps and breathing. I think it’s the same as talking to the person in the seat next to you. There’s also nothing wrong with be connected to all our technology. I mean as Penn Jillette said yesterday at BlogWorld “If the conversations we are having online aren’t real, then what the fuck are they?” – Right? It’s how we met and got to know each other after all 🙂
This “bubble” that is created around ourselves and our devices is quite an interesting phenomenon to pay attention to. Understanding the “zone” people get into and how it’s similar or different to others is an important thing to understand when as businesses we are working towards developing touch-points within them. Funny how nowadays, for many of us, the face-to-face encounters often seem like the out of the ordinary, rather than the other way around. Thank you for reminding us how very important they are!
Happy Sunday Jim! 🙂
*nods* Yes, understanding the “touch points” in our online “zone” is very important. Thanks for that, you just connected some dots for one of my projects….and people wonder why and how I find the time to writer here each day….moments like this 🙂