Red is White: Faithful & Stylish

I recently went camping for a week in the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains. I was DISCONNECTED. No cell phone service, no TV, no Internet… no technology. It was grand. It really gave me a chance to actually enjoy the immense and incredible beauty God has created, without distractions.

When I came home, however, I was presented with a different challenge. Within a day or two, I lost:

1) my cell phone (which I found three days later buried under some dirty laundry)

2) internet service (because I bought a new laptop and couldn’t figure out how to set up my Wi-Fi!)

3) and TV (because I was too busy trying to figure out the other two things)

When I was camping, I expected to not have these items of technology, and it was totally fine. It was more than fine, really. But to be back in my urban setting, DISCONNECTED, threw me into a panic! It made me wonder, quite naturally, at how much I depend on these things.

It’s kind of funny, but I didn’t feel the urge to make a lot of really important phone calls until I lost my phone. I didn’t happen to remember all of the people I wanted to send e-mails to until I lost access to that, either!

At the campsite, I got into a really nice routine in the morning. I would wake up around 7, build a little morning campfire, get hot water going for some coffee, sit at the fire I built for a short while, get some breakfast going (pancakes/eggs), eat breakfast, and then… THE DISHES. This is where I was wishing I had a nice dishwasher around, or at least a sink with warm running water to help me out. But I had neither. So, by the time I warmed up some water to do the dishes, washed them and dried them and put them all away so they wouldn’t get dirty, it was sometime around 9:30.

I realized then, that much of the technology we have is based on convenience, or helping us to do things quicker and easier.

Many of you who visit this website are graphic designers, so obviously, technology is kind of a pretty big part of your everyday life. But even if you don’t work at a computer all day, it just seems that the way we “connect” to the outside world these days is always through some sort of technology. I think that it is good, and it is right to question what it is that we are doing with all of this “extra time” that technology is supposed to afford us. What are you filling your time with?

Is it with anything wholesome? Things that allow us time to reflect upon the life the Creator made for us? Or do we end up filling it with even more technology?

I survived my life unplugged. And I quite enjoyed it.