If you feed the beast, it will destroy you!

A simple photograph made me aware of the changes in our society. An older gentleman sitting on a small bench, the people walking around him, didn’t seem to notice him at all.

The gentleman seemed absent-minded, or perhaps he just needed a break from everyday life. He glanced at something only he could see, it looked like he didn’t want to be disturbed -yet he was.

A blogger had noticed him and took the picture I was looking at. The older gentleman without a name, not knowingly, had ended up in the blogging world. Perhaps nobody will remember him, it was just another photography-challenge that we tend to forget, as soon as we are done looking at it.

Do we even look at it? I think back at a time when our developed pictures ended up in a photo album. We shared vacations and special events, with friends and family and everybody who was willing to look. I never had the patience or the desire to see too many pictures. I always found an excuse to walk away, first chance I got.

I have always been a private person. I don’t have the need to share my life with people I don’t know. Right from the start, I feared social media. It was something I could not fully understand.

But even I was drawn to it and signed up for Facebook, just to find out that now people, who didn’t like me a few years ago, had come around and wanted to befriend me. Most of them, I didn’t like back then either so that just was an option for me.

The fake online word that we create so perfectly, is something I don’t want to see anymore. Perfect lives, perfect smiles, perfect people all around. Sharing things of tremendous importance, like a picture of their breakfast, or another selfie they took with the same facial impression they showed us yesterday.

The gentlemen who got robbed of his privacy didn’t leave my mind. Whatever I do outside of my own four walls, can now be recorded or captured as picture anytime, anybody pleases to do so. Even at home, many of us have now devices, who could record our conversations at all times -but that, of course, is not their purpose, so they won’t -so they say.

While still on my search for an explanation that would clarify some things that are happening in this country and in this world, I stumbled across a short movie at YouTube that sums up what I fear.

We continue to feed a beast that is out of control already. I have now limited myself to one hour of computer time per day -that includes my invoices and business emails- and it has had a tremendous impact on my life. I am calmer and I feel happier all around.

I still enjoy reading blogs in the morning, but only one post per blogger. Everything above would take precious time away from a day, that can be full of smiles -if I play my cards right.

I have started -and finished- numerous projects and even felt the desire to get crafty in my private time -with mixed results, if I may add.

For now, I will continue blogging and perhaps share various content that is driving my hamster in the wheel, but maybe not for long. I seem to like my new lifestyle and the 1-hour rule I have given myself.

I am not old enough to spend too much time in front of a screen. I am too young to not live life to the fullest.