Saturday, October 4, 2014

Spending More Time With Kids Yesterday and Spending Less Time On the Internet Today

So... Septermber, I planned to spend at least one hour a day with my kids.
That didn't work as expected: I did not spend that much time. I did not expect this to be a challenge. But it was.
But at least I tried to be more aware of the time I do spend time with them. And that was great.

It was great to get to know them a little more, like experience their thoughts. A great example of that:

My wife pointed my kids to see the full moon. And then my second son said, that he wants to touch the moon. And thus, he will use a very very very very ... ...very long ladder to achieve that goal. My oldest son said, that he will use a big rocket to get to the moon. And that he will put the moon into the trunk of that rocket. After that, both were debating, whether this rocket with the trunk has be bigger that our car or not.

Wonderful.

Spending time with kids is great. Even if it's short.
This month I will spend less than half an hour each day on the internet for private use.
But there are some problems, I already encountered:

It's not 1999 anymore, where you could clearly distinguish between being online or not: For being online, your computer had to be turned on and you had to dial the internet connection with the modem. If that successed, you were online (and you better use the connection, because you pay per minute). If not, or you closed the connection, you weren't.

Today, I even don't know whether I'm online: If my notebook has an active wi-fi connection, I'm technically online. Do I use it? I don't know. I don't know, whether my browser is upgrading in background, whether windows tries to download some updates, whether my smartphone (which is currently in my bedroom upstairs) is receiving some WhatsApp messages. Hard to decide.

I also struggle with the definition: private use. Is searching something for my friends private? Reading stuff online for educational purposes, which will affect my work quality at my job?

All I can say now, after four days of internet diet: I'm so much more aware how much my life relies upon the internet today. It's almost frightening.