Life is full of distractions. Constantly. And I feel like in our modern society we seem to come up with even more distractions. Why do we want to escape our realities?

Giving up drinking over a year ago has made more of my life inescapable. I wasn’t a roll around the gutter kind of drunk, I was a social outgoing enthusiastic participant in a hugely socially acceptable drug. Most people are. And that is totally okay. It is just not for me anymore. But it has got me thinking, what other things disengage/distract/ detach us from our real worlds? And why do we want to keep being distracted?

Because life is hard. Life is unfair. Life can be a pain in the arse. But it can also be awesome. If you are lucky. If you work hard, marry the right guy, look a certain way…blah blah blah… who the hell knows? The longer I go without drinking, the more I realise this. And quite frankly it is making me want to drink again. But hey that’s for another post.

Back to distractions… gosh could it be that I just got distracted? How unusual and unlike me? Haha. I am a teacher and recently I have noticed a sad phenomenon. At recess and lunch we would normally expect kids to be running around, chatting to each other, playing ball games and getting some fresh air. Not anymore. These days, in their break times, most kids seem to want to stay glued to their computer screens. Each child has a laptop at school and rather than leaving them in the classrooms or bags (which I think could be the most simple solution here), they continue to stare blankly and mutely into their screens. It is really sad, and it is really scary. Scary because we are raising disengaged little robots with poor social skills, who seem to exercise less and less.

That reminds me, I need to get off here and go for a walk.

I did go for that walk btw. But really I am very concerned about the obsession we have with screens. I know I am contributing to it by writing this here and by being an active participant in all the screen consumption. My concern is that we are all quite obsessed with it all. We go from a mobile to a laptop to a T.V. to an iPad, and back again. We all need more nature time!

I am going to keep this one brief. But let’s all aim to try and get a bit more quiet time this week, less distractions, more focus, more quiet time, and more nature, and please, less screens.

I am getting into the habit of enjoying silence more. It is hard at times. It seems a habit to have a tv on or the radio on, but I am growing more and more use to this simple notion of quietness. And I like it. Cheers to silence. I read somewhere recently that 2 hours of silence time a day helps to recharge your brain and improves mental clarity and function. I am all for that! When was the last time you enjoyed some silent time?

Yours in epiphanies and enjoyable quiet time,

Anita xx