All day long, I’m surrounded by technology…heck, who am I kidding? I’m IMMERSED by technology. At work, my job revolves around my work issued laptop and my iPhone, along with my iPad. When I get home, it is like second nature to work from my cell phone while feeding the baby, feeding myself, feeding the husband, and feeding the dog. The other night when I was playing with the little one, he somehow managed to grab my iPhone off of the table, and before I could even grab it from him, he had opened up the home screen and was pushing the apps like a pro! Did I mention he is just a year old? How did he learn to do this already?? Then it hit me – he has learned this from watching me. Do you know what makes me feel even more horrible? Thinking about how many times I have pulled it out in front of him without realizing it and playing with my phone before playing with him…..it kills me. I’ve got to learn to unplug, and here is how I’m going to do it ::
- No cell phone usage from the time I arrive home from work until after I put the baby to sleep. As a full time working mommy {over 50+ hours a week sometimes}, I owe it to MYSELF to shut myself down, electronically speaking, and focus on my family. I swear I am not addicted to technology, but because I depend on it so much at work, it just feels so natural to use it all the time. I need to be fair to myself and enjoy the time with my wonderful husband and son.
- I’m going to turn my phone OFF at night and rely on an ACTUAL alarm clock! I have a perfectly good clock that sits next to my side of the bed that is basically just collecting dust because I use the alarm on my cell phone instead. Sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night, I find myself pushing the button on the top or side to check the time…and then sometimes I am tempted to see who sent me an email from work. By doing this, it starts my mind up again and tricks me into thinking it is time to wake up, and then I never fall back asleep! I need to learn that everything can wait until the morning when I am awake and ready to tackle the day head on. My husband would probably appreciate this too, as the illuminating glow from my phone sometimes wakes him up! {Sorry, honey!}
- On the weekends, I’m going to attempt to go technology free. This is going to be super hard for me…the weekends are typically the only free time I have to scour Pinterest and find new blogs to read {plus do homework}, but I feel that the time I spend on my phone could be better spent actually resting and having fun! I’m sure I will grab my phone from time to time, but now that I am aware of what I intend to do with my technology, I think it might be easier to switch off the phone and focus on my surroundings.
I miss my family so much when I work such crazy hours during the week – I owe it to them to give them 100% of me 100% of the time. I know that there are moments when looking at my phone will be unavoidable, but I want to make a more conscientious effort to unplug from technology and tune into what matters most – spending quality time with my family.
Moms, how do you unplug? Any advice you have would be so very much appreciated!!
Kuddos to you! Unplugging can be SOOO hard! I also try really, really hard to only do technology when I am having “me” time or when my son is sleeping. It can be really tough, and I slip up, but he reminds me ever so quickly by misbehaving because I am not giving him enough attention. LOL!
Michelle I love this! I wish I could do the tech free weekends but I do love browsing Pinterest and catching up on whatever blogging I can during that time. It’s time for me! These are great tips. I’m going to really try to be as tech free as possible during Lent and then see where that takes me.