Realizing it can wait

Remember the day when we all sat in the car and talked and played car games? Relied on big huge bulky maps of the entire country, separated by states, where you had to connect A5 to D2 to find your destination? When you called to let the person know you were just about to leave and wouldn’t talk to them until you pulled up in their driveway?

Since June, when I went to Milwaukee and didn’t take my laptop, I’ve felt a shift of sorts in my use of all my gadgets. I have a lot of them. The iPhone, iPad, iPod, Kindle, and my laptop. Overwhelming at times, not to mention confusing when I’m reaching for one and do a jerky arm move over everything because I can’t figure out which I’m going for.

Up until a few weeks ago, I was a master texter while driving. I can text without looking and drive with my knee like no one you’ve ever seen…until I looked down to proof read and see I was one letter over to the left and all my words were misspelled. So of course, I would then survey the road, ensuring no cars were coming toward me (because I made it a “rule” to not text when a car was about to pass me) and proceed to look down to fix all the mistakes.

I always told myself I should cut back on texting and driving. I should. But it was always too easy to grab it when someone texted. I’ve mentioned it before; I generally text a person immediately upon receiving their text. If I read it and don’t, I’ll forget to respond, so I don’t wait. I’m just about always available. Even phone. I have this thing where its hard letting a call go to voicemail.

Well, I have noticed that no matter how quickly I’ll write back, they can take up to 5, 10, sometimes 30 minutes to get back to me. Odd seeing how they just texted but its slowly sunk in these past couple weeks that its okay to wait. Its okay to let that call from that client go to voicemail at 8:30pm. It’s okay to read a text and not respond until the morning. And most importantly, its okay to not touch my phone when I’m driving.

Why? I honestly have to remind myself that the person who is texting me, or calling me took 15 minutes to write back. Or 3 days to return my call, and if they feel its ok for me to wait, then I know its ok for them to wait that 20 minute drive home to respond. Its not an emergency, its not life or death. It’s a silly text about a piece of paper, or a workout, or someone wanting to say hi.

They can wait.

For the past 5-6 weeks, I’ve made huge efforts to stop texting while driving. There have been a couple times I’ve done it but 98% of the time I wait. And you want to know something crazy? The people on the receiving end of my texts, haven’t complained one bit. Heck, I bet they didn’t even notice I took longer than normal.

Everything is at our fingertips now. GPS, video games, communication. There’s no need to wait anymore when all a person needs is to grab their smart phone and look it up while sitting in the car driving down the road. And there’s no need to map it out to such great extent as before. We can call the person on our way and say we’re coming and call them 10 minutes before we get there. And we can all zone out to our little video games, keeping us separate from our riding companions. Things are not the same as when we grew up.

I love my iPhone, but I miss those days of less. So I’m working on less. Less texting, less computer time, less zoning out just to zone out..and I have to say, its been pretty nice.

Have a safe weekend and remember, it really can wait.

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