For the past month I have felt like my right arm has been chopped off. In my bid to save some money I decided to stop paying for internet usage on my mobile phone because my phone has been playing up and just wasn’t doing what I needed it to. I used to receive all my emails direct to my phone, I would keep in touch with friends through twitter, catch up with Facebook and even write the odd post for my blog whilst out and about. When I made the decision to stop the internet I had told myself, I don’t use it that much, I won’t miss it. But I have proved the old saying ‘you don’t know what you’ve got until its gone’, its right, you don’t!
I can hand on heart say that I don’t use the internet to the detriment of my children, I don’t have time to use the internet when they are awake, they keep me very busy. But when they are having naps or are busy at playgroup I hadn’t realised how readily I would pick up my phone to reply to the odd email or send a tweet about something to a friend. Since cancelling my internet I have become less organised, my evenings that used to be free to get on with writing a blog post or something really exciting like ironing, are now filled with responding to the 40some emails I receive each day. I can no longer drip feed them throughout the day.
Those Mums out there with baby brain I’m sure will hear me on this one, I keep forgetting to do things. When you have baby brain you need to act on a thought whilst its there because if you file it away for ‘later’ you can guarantee it will be forgotten until its too late. Without the internet to hop onto Google or banking or Ebay, I have missed opportunities or important dates all because my baby brain can’t handle the pressure without a little technical help.
Yesterday I attended a blogging event which normally I would have been tweeting about to help promote the event along with my blogging buddies, but I couldn’t. I saw my last tweet at 8.30am before I left the house and didn’t see my next one until 8.30pm when I had returned home and managed to get the overtired children into bed. By that time I had missed many of the conversations and felt ‘out of the loop’. It was a strange place to be.
I’m not sure what we all did before the internet and mobile phones but it really is part of our everyday life now, I like it, it helps me and it makes my life easier. I’ve just got to figure out a way to keep it on the move too.