Category: Blogging

A couple of weeks ago I bought a tablet. It’s a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 and I truly adore it. It’s like all the good stuff about a phone and all the good stuff about a laptop rolled into one beautiful package. This weekend I bought a MiFi device which means I can connect my tablet to the internet anytime from basically anywhere. I am plugged in.

I resisted the advance of cell phone technology for a long time. I held on to the candy bar style phone forever. I stubbornly stayed on a prepaid plan.

When Joshua first got a smartphone, a Palm Treo circa 2006, I didn’t get the appeal. Every time I tried to do something on it I got so frustrated at the tiny screen and tiny keys.

Besides, did I really need to access my email all the time?

Then one day I accidentally a smartphone.

Joshua and I had combined our financial lives so I could just be on his account, and I got a slightly older phone so it was really cheap, and well, what the hell?

I got an Android phone, but this switch for me was in post-iPhone era, and geez the difference from Joshua’s first smartphone was HUGE.

I turned out to absolutely love the whole thing of smartphones. I regretted not having jumped in sooner, because I really took to it, using my phone to its full capabilities.

But you do get mentally locked into a trajectory. When that first older model phone died, I had to get something latest-and-greatest. And now I have a tablet. And MiFi. And well… I am rather plugged in in a way that I wasn’t 5 years ago and the way some of my friends aren’t today perhaps because they’ve avoided the siren call of the smartphone longer than I did. Joshua and I have started to joke that we’re ready to have the Internet jacked into our heads now. Tiny screens on our eyeballs, now, please?

The things I do with my tech are numerous. I use my phone for phone calls, email, texting, chatting, web browsing, blog maintaining, social media, record keeping, note taking, appointment setting, and photo editing, and as a dictionary, calendar, recipe box, shopping list, phone book, notebook, camera, video camera, clock, alarm clock, radio, calculator, flashlight, and game console.

I used to fret about how much time I spent online. I have a friend who is currently taking a social media hiatus, and I completely understand where she’s coming from. There are times in my life where I’ve felt uneasy about my relationship with phone/computer technology and especially social media.

But I think I’m over that. For one thing, I consider “online” my job. I get paid to blog and to use social media. That’s awesome.

And also, I have simply embraced that this is where I am right now. I love the tech. It’s working for me. It’s integrated into my life in a way that is really enjoyable and feels like it enhances rather than detracts.

Nothing about social media concerns me. In fact, I drink up every detail. The pace excites me, the different platforms intrigue me, the new social patterns fit with me, and I am feeling comfortably at home.

I said to Joshua the other day that when it comes to writing down my job title somewhere, I feel the urge to put “writer” because that sounds familiar. But it’s not really accurate. Writing is only 20% (if that) of what’s going on. The rest of it is social media, marketing, SEO, design, networking, etc. I put down “blogger” as my title instead, because that more accurately captures everything that I’m focused on.

My technological toys are a huge part of making all those details happen. I got the MiFi so I can use my tablet to write while I’m out at a park with Dylan. I do lots of blog maintenance from my phone. I do social media from all my devices!

You can take all this as a peek at my thinking about technology, my blogging, and where my head’s at these days. Or, just as accurately, you could say that this was just one long-winded way to say… I love my new tablet! Squeeee!