#from the lovely sensation of being simultaneously over and understimulated

[zyrafowe-sny]

My brain is sad soup today.

[mewrising]

Ayshe had never seen anything like it.

Of course, she was used to finding new things.  Every turned season saw fresh species spring into the public eye, sometimes out from under her very own claws.  Still, she couldn’t keep her heart from quickening when the burrow she unearthed had something unfamiliar hidden inside.  The sensation was always a thrill, and she couldn’t get enough.

With careful claws, Ayshe lifted the peculiar beast from its winter home.  The Windswept Plateau was a rich but underutilized herping ground, its mercurial temperatures often driving local reptiles to an early torpor.  Researchers like herself could study them in ease and safety with enough cautious digging, replacing the creatures in their burrows once the data was collected.  She’d been scouring it for almost as long as she’d been a zoologist, but it had never formally yielded up something so novel.

She scarcely dared to breathe as she set the little reptile gently down on the grass.  Her many eyes studied it critically, cataloguing every feature as her heart thundered eagerly.  It was every part as foreign as she anticipated at first glance, all slender limbs and graceful curves.  It was clearly a more magical species than the average creature she catalogued, possessing a set of budding branches--almost like horns--atop its graceful head.  ‘A waylaid nature species?’  she wondered, carefully turning it over.

She felt close to yelling in shock when she glimpsed wings on its back.

She had studied many six-limbed, non-dragon creatures in her lifetime.  There were manticores and sphinxes, not to mention centaurs and gryphons and talonok.  The problem was that not a single one had been reptilian--not without also being a dragon.  To discover a true lizard with four legs and wings...it was the discovery of a lifetime.  A discovery that would bring her acclaim from Sornieth’s many corners.

She didn’t consider herself a very prideful dragon, but the thought of seeing her name in every zoological publication across the globe was one she couldn’t help but savor.

With trembling talons, she unclipped a specimen box from her belt.  She usually buried the creatures she uncovered again once she was done with them, but, if there was any time to make an exception, this was it.

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Her assistants took on the rest of the creatures under her care without asking questions, a fact for which Ayshe was extraordinarily grateful.  The new find required her full attention, in part because she knew nothing about it and in part because she was too fascinated to devote the proper amount of attention to anything else.  Within the day, she had rigged terrariums of all shapes and sizes, each ready to suit the needs of the creature once it awoke from its torpor, whatever they might prove to be.  She checked the heated tank where she had placed it every few minutes, hoping to catch its first moments awake.  Something in her soul resonated with the newness of it.  Every moment would be discovery.

A thin, melodic trill was what ultimately signaled its return to wakefulness.  Ayshe nearly tripped over her own talons in her rush to see it--to truly see it--for the very first time.  It waited patiently right where she had left it, in the small, empty warming tank where other reptiles were routinely roused from their torpors for study.  Its movements were sluggish in the most graceful way, and it stretched out its doubtlessly tired muscles with the ease of a Floracat.  Even as Ayshe watched, it yawned, revealing needlelike teeth and a small forked tongue.

Its eyes were a bright, intelligent green, like those of a familiar.  Ayshe’s heart stirred just to look at it, both out of excitement and something more unnatural--like magic.  Her mind was a flurry of questions and guessed answers, and her claws grabbed for paper and quill reflexively.  She had so much to mark down and simultaneously not enough.  She loved it.

She unrolled her first scroll as the little lizard began to explore its temporary housing, and she marked down a running title for what was bound to be an extensive document,

“Ayshe’s Pseudragon: A Study”

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The pseudragon, as Ayshe experimentally titled it, was moved into a much larger terrarium without too much delay.  It seemed to be an arboreal species moreso than an aquatic or desert one, so Ayshe’s engineered environment contained some false greenery and driftwood.  Its initial reaction to the space quickly and thankfully confirmed her initial assumptions, and the following days consisted largely of the introduction of many plants local to the Plateau in hopes of simulating its traditional environment, as well as hours of careful monitoring.

Ayshe tactfully refused to reveal the creature to anyone else, hoping to preserve its novelty until her initial publication.  Any assistants who became too curious were given sharp warnings or outright letters of dismissal, and the door to Ayshe’s office was kept locked at all times, whether she was out or in.  Her observational document grew larger by the day, consisting mostly of scattered hypotheses and assumed truths.  Only when she was sleeping did the Ridgeback abandon the effort of learning more; otherwise, her time was full of watching, writing, and reading through obscure bestiaries in search of any archaic mentions of similar creatures.

She learned that it could eat almost anything put in front of it without issue.  Small pieces of seafood were consumed just as readily as insects, and it took plants and meat with the same degree of eagerness.  It never showed any particular sensitivity to what she fed it--another staggering relief--and the routine medical spells she leveraged on it always turned up fine.  She couldn’t understand how such a hardy creature could also be so scarce, but there was no denying that it was the only of its kind in living memory.  She could find no mentions of it anywhere, and her routine trips back to the mainland of the Plateau proved that, if any others of its kind existed, they were very carefully hidden.

She could feel its eyes on her any time she was nearby, and that was the only thing about it that ever concerned her.  Its eyes were, frankly, unnerving, sharp and analytical in a way that few non-dragon creatures’ were.  They almost seemed to study her, watching her every move with interest.  At first, Ayshe assumed that it was merely understimulated, but its eyes never left her, not even as she introduced it to novel items and fresh terrariums.  She grew increasingly certain that it wanted something out of her, and she couldn’t even begin to guess what that something might be.

She never anticipated that such a small creature, and such a tremendous discovery, could strike genuine concern into her heart.

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Dynamis bided her time with a cautious ease, unwilling to move until she was certain of the outcome.  There was no telling how long she had been asleep--months, years, decades?  She could scarcely remember the world before her torpor, a fact which convinced her that she’d been dozing for far too long.  She’d never thought that the Plateau would be so cold and so empty.  Without her swarm, she’d never even stood a chance against the world outside the Wood.

Not until now.

The creature on the outside of the glass was one that she supposed was probably a dragon, a fact which boded well for her purposes.  They were impossibly large and bulky, with spines in all the wrong places and too-long claws.  She thought they might be of Lightning descent for how much they resembled the thunderous Stormcatcher, though the pale color of their eyes was much more reminiscent of the Southern Icefield’s stern denizens.

Eyes.  The sheer quantity of eyes on the dragon outside Dynamis’ prison was something she found confounding and intriguing in equal measures.  She’d never seen such a strange phenomenon; it confused and delighted her to see something so genuinely new.  She could believe new dragons without too much effort, but new magic was something so thrilling she couldn’t even put it into words.

And the fact that it took the form of eyes was just too perfect.  The poor dragon wouldn’t even stand a chance; no, they wouldn’t.

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Ayshe was fully prepared to believe that the lizard’s wings were vestigial and useless, so seeing them put to work one day as she entered her office was shocking enough to elicit a yelp of surprise.  The graceful creature flitted about with a fitting ease, its wings beating with the speed and maneuverability of a hummingbird’s.  Her claws were around a quill and at work on her scroll almost before she could fully comprehend what she was seeing, and the eyes along her neck observed the phenomenon farther as she endeavored to write out the tumult of thoughts in her brain.

She didn’t realize that she had stopped writing until the quill physically dropped from her paw, leaving a trail of jagged ink across the paper.  Her body felt lethargic and clumsy, almost paralyzed.  She found herself turning, training her foremost eyes on the creature as it flew.  The act was hypnotizing!  The glitter of its wings and the grace of its movements...she felt like she could watch it all day.

In an instant, she decided that she would.

It wasn’t a decision she made wholly on her own.

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With a sigh of contentment, Dynamis landed on the nearest branch and willed her hapless jailer to undo the locks and let her free.  Not a single one of the dragon’s eyes blinked, a sure sign of their utter enthrallment.  A Veilspun’s chief weakness was the proximity they had to keep with their vessels, and that weakness was resolved in the face of the new dragon’s peculiarities.  She could be in their peripherals almost anywhere; nestled in their wings or clinging to their tail, she’d never be wholly out of sight.  So long as her magic held, and so long as her vessel remained in good health, she had easy access to the rest of the world.

Settling on one of the dragon’s jagged shoulders, Dynamis explored the room freely and with wild abandon.  She cared well enough for the trinkets lining the shelves, but the scrolls were her real target, the true object of her attention.  She could see them lying all over the tables, each one drenched in the ink of a thousand spilled thoughts.  She saw red just thinking of how much damage even misinformation could do to her kind.

Her first free act was to destroy them all.  She delighted to see them engulfed in neon foxfire, to watch them dissolve into scraps and ashes.

The secrets of the Veilspun were not hers to give.

[albertcaldwellne]

The Struggle of a Digital Immigrant

I am a digital immigrant.

When I was child, we had a phone attached to the wall, and couldn’t even see who was calling until we answered. We played outside, and occupied ourselves with imaginative games of make-believe and exploration. We had “quiet time” when my mom needed a break, and there was nothing in our rooms other than books and legos to distract us.

By the time I was in high school we had dial-up, so I could AIM chat with my friends, and download songs on Napster.

Never mind that dad needed us to get off RIGHT NOW because he was expecting a call, or that one song could literally take 6 hours to download– it was the beginning of digital connectivity. I could have secret chats with my friends without even making a phone call! I didn’t have to wait until the next day to find out the latest gossip! It was glorious.

Through AIM chat, I began to develop my very first digital identity, with creatively arranged song lyrics and quotes in my away message. It was my first clumsy attempt to digitally signal (through poorly veiled metaphors) what I wanted people to know about me.

“The shoes on my feet, I bought it. The clothes I’m wearing, I bought it. The rock I’m rockin’, I bought it. Cause I depend on me.”

Back then we could choose when to connect and when to disconnect; when to develop our digital identities, and when to develop our real-life identities. Only one of these happened at a time. When I spent time with my friends or family, we were the only people in the room.

Nowadays our digital and real life selves are blurred, and occur simultaneously, because every single moment of every single day, we are connected to everything and everyone.

Nowadays we have a hundred paused conversations happening at once, from text to email to facebook to twitter, with people all over the world, ready to be unpaused by just glancing at our phones. And our phones are with us at all times, which means that now when we spend time with friends or family, it’s never just us in the room.

The digital era has changed our lives. Now when we wonder something, we just look it up. If we think of someone, we text them. If we’re bored, we entertain ourselves. If we’re feeling bad about ourselves, we do something to feel “productive.” If we feel lonely, we turn to social media to feel connected.

We used to have to make plans and then either follow through or stand someone up. Now we can cancel or change plans at any and every moment, and have an entire culture built around instantaneous last minute plan changing.

Now we are constantly consuming– articles, tweets, posts, emails, texts, feelings, thoughts, opinions, brands, images, videos, and more. We are never alone. We are never unplugged. We are are constantly aware that the whole big world, with all of it’s pain and suffering and brilliance and knowledge and support and humor and community, is RIGHT THERE. We know this, even when we turn our phones off, or leave them home.

It’s a different world now, and we live differently in it. But none of this is news.

You’re most likely a digital immigrant, too. The upcoming generations won’t remember another way of being. The digital natives won’t know what it felt like to ever be truly alone or disconnected or unplugged. They won’t know how it feels to be stood up, or to get really lost, or to figure out how to do something complicated without directions. I’m not saying any of this a bad thing. I am progressive at heart, and I see no benefit to resisting progress or clinging to the past.

Perhaps the digital natives will change the world for the better, because they will have been brought up on new ideas and ways of being. Perhaps they will naturally strike a peaceful balance with technology, and they won’t suffer as we do.

Because the thing is, us digital immigrants… we are suffering.

Our emigration to the digital era happened slowly enough that we didn’t realize what a big transition we were all going through, though it was fast enough to change every single aspect of our lives. I believe that many of us are still trying to catch up, and that there has been an extraordinary cost to our transition.

I’m not hating on the internet, mind you.

I talk to people all over the world every single day. I coach people on nearly every continent, and my social media community lives in every corner of the earth. I love the work I do, I love writing, I love being fully free and mobile… and yet.

And yet I experience an intense yearning to be in a room with other people and not feel the presence of our phones. I yearn for eye contact, and undistracted conversation, and the peace and simplicity that comes from knowing that nothing else is planned or available– this moment is the only option, so we may as well be fully present.

I also have a deep aching to be truly alone.

I turn my phone off sometimes, but I’m still never disconnected, because I know I’m only about 34 seconds away from it booting up. It’s like filling your cupboards with chocolate and then pretending it’s not there, so it doesn’t tempt you– the sensation is not the same as if it really wasn’t there.

I yearn to not know how to do something, or to not know what my friends are up to, or to not know that my peers have just launched a new product. I yearn to wonder, and guess, and daydream. I yearn to be bored and understimulated.

And I’m not alone.

When I speak of these feelings to other digital immigrants, there is an air of agreement.

“Yes,” they whisper. They share how compulsively they check their phones, how they can’t leave the office at the office, and how they “relax” with social media only to find themselves more anxious than when they started. They share how knowing the endless options of what they could be doing right now makes them feel constantly stressed and insecure and unsatisfied.

We are suffering for a lack of simplicity and true connection. We are suffering from an over-saturation of digital consumption and stimulation. We are suffering.

I believe we immigrants still need to learn how to thrive in this new world, likely with better boundaries, a stronger awareness of how things affect us, and a shift in priorities.

I have no idea what that will look like, but I suspect it begins with conversations like this one.

Thoughts?

Love, Jessi

The post The Struggle of a Digital Immigrant appeared first on Jessi Kneeland.

https://ift.tt/2HmkFJP

[joshuabradleyn]

The Struggle of a Digital Immigrant

I am a digital immigrant.

When I was child, we had a phone attached to the wall, and couldn’t even see who was calling until we answered. We played outside, and occupied ourselves with imaginative games of make-believe and exploration. We had “quiet time” when my mom needed a break, and there was nothing in our rooms other than books and legos to distract us.

By the time I was in high school we had dial-up, so I could AIM chat with my friends, and download songs on Napster.

Never mind that dad needed us to get off RIGHT NOW because he was expecting a call, or that one song could literally take 6 hours to download– it was the beginning of digital connectivity. I could have secret chats with my friends without even making a phone call! I didn’t have to wait until the next day to find out the latest gossip! It was glorious.

Through AIM chat, I began to develop my very first digital identity, with creatively arranged song lyrics and quotes in my away message. It was my first clumsy attempt to digitally signal (through poorly veiled metaphors) what I wanted people to know about me.

“The shoes on my feet, I bought it. The clothes I’m wearing, I bought it. The rock I’m rockin’, I bought it. Cause I depend on me.”

Back then we could choose when to connect and when to disconnect; when to develop our digital identities, and when to develop our real-life identities. Only one of these happened at a time. When I spent time with my friends or family, we were the only people in the room.

Nowadays our digital and real life selves are blurred, and occur simultaneously, because every single moment of every single day, we are connected to everything and everyone.

Nowadays we have a hundred paused conversations happening at once, from text to email to facebook to twitter, with people all over the world, ready to be unpaused by just glancing at our phones. And our phones are with us at all times, which means that now when we spend time with friends or family, it’s never just us in the room.

The digital era has changed our lives. Now when we wonder something, we just look it up. If we think of someone, we text them. If we’re bored, we entertain ourselves. If we’re feeling bad about ourselves, we do something to feel “productive.” If we feel lonely, we turn to social media to feel connected.

We used to have to make plans and then either follow through or stand someone up. Now we can cancel or change plans at any and every moment, and have an entire culture built around instantaneous last minute plan changing.

Now we are constantly consuming– articles, tweets, posts, emails, texts, feelings, thoughts, opinions, brands, images, videos, and more. We are never alone. We are never unplugged. We are are constantly aware that the whole big world, with all of it’s pain and suffering and brilliance and knowledge and support and humor and community, is RIGHT THERE. We know this, even when we turn our phones off, or leave them home.

It’s a different world now, and we live differently in it. But none of this is news.

You’re most likely a digital immigrant, too. The upcoming generations won’t remember another way of being. The digital natives won’t know what it felt like to ever be truly alone or disconnected or unplugged. They won’t know how it feels to be stood up, or to get really lost, or to figure out how to do something complicated without directions. I’m not saying any of this a bad thing. I am progressive at heart, and I see no benefit to resisting progress or clinging to the past.

Perhaps the digital natives will change the world for the better, because they will have been brought up on new ideas and ways of being. Perhaps they will naturally strike a peaceful balance with technology, and they won’t suffer as we do.

Because the thing is, us digital immigrants… we are suffering.

Our emigration to the digital era happened slowly enough that we didn’t realize what a big transition we were all going through, though it was fast enough to change every single aspect of our lives. I believe that many of us are still trying to catch up, and that there has been an extraordinary cost to our transition.

I’m not hating on the internet, mind you.

I talk to people all over the world every single day. I coach people on nearly every continent, and my social media community lives in every corner of the earth. I love the work I do, I love writing, I love being fully free and mobile… and yet.

And yet I experience an intense yearning to be in a room with other people and not feel the presence of our phones. I yearn for eye contact, and undistracted conversation, and the peace and simplicity that comes from knowing that nothing else is planned or available– this moment is the only option, so we may as well be fully present.

I also have a deep aching to be truly alone.

I turn my phone off sometimes, but I’m still never disconnected, because I know I’m only about 34 seconds away from it booting up. It’s like filling your cupboards with chocolate and then pretending it’s not there, so it doesn’t tempt you– the sensation is not the same as if it really wasn’t there.

I yearn to not know how to do something, or to not know what my friends are up to, or to not know that my peers have just launched a new product. I yearn to wonder, and guess, and daydream. I yearn to be bored and understimulated.

And I’m not alone.

When I speak of these feelings to other digital immigrants, there is an air of agreement.

“Yes,” they whisper. They share how compulsively they check their phones, how they can’t leave the office at the office, and how they “relax” with social media only to find themselves more anxious than when they started. They share how knowing the endless options of what they could be doing right now makes them feel constantly stressed and insecure and unsatisfied.

We are suffering for a lack of simplicity and true connection. We are suffering from an over-saturation of digital consumption and stimulation. We are suffering.

I believe we immigrants still need to learn how to thrive in this new world, likely with better boundaries, a stronger awareness of how things affect us, and a shift in priorities.

I have no idea what that will look like, but I suspect it begins with conversations like this one.

Thoughts?

Love, Jessi

The post The Struggle of a Digital Immigrant appeared first on Jessi Kneeland.

https://ift.tt/2HmkFJP

[almajonesnjna]

The Struggle of a Digital Immigrant

I am a digital immigrant.

When I was child, we had a phone attached to the wall, and couldn’t even see who was calling until we answered. We played outside, and occupied ourselves with imaginative games of make-believe and exploration. We had “quiet time” when my mom needed a break, and there was nothing in our rooms other than books and legos to distract us.

By the time I was in high school we had dial-up, so I could AIM chat with my friends, and download songs on Napster.

Never mind that dad needed us to get off RIGHT NOW because he was expecting a call, or that one song could literally take 6 hours to download– it was the beginning of digital connectivity. I could have secret chats with my friends without even making a phone call! I didn’t have to wait until the next day to find out the latest gossip! It was glorious.

Through AIM chat, I began to develop my very first digital identity, with creatively arranged song lyrics and quotes in my away message. It was my first clumsy attempt to digitally signal (through poorly veiled metaphors) what I wanted people to know about me.

“The shoes on my feet, I bought it. The clothes I’m wearing, I bought it. The rock I’m rockin’, I bought it. Cause I depend on me.”

Back then we could choose when to connect and when to disconnect; when to develop our digital identities, and when to develop our real-life identities. Only one of these happened at a time. When I spent time with my friends or family, we were the only people in the room.

Nowadays our digital and real life selves are blurred, and occur simultaneously, because every single moment of every single day, we are connected to everything and everyone.

Nowadays we have a hundred paused conversations happening at once, from text to email to facebook to twitter, with people all over the world, ready to be unpaused by just glancing at our phones. And our phones are with us at all times, which means that now when we spend time with friends or family, it’s never just us in the room.

The digital era has changed our lives. Now when we wonder something, we just look it up. If we think of someone, we text them. If we’re bored, we entertain ourselves. If we’re feeling bad about ourselves, we do something to feel “productive.” If we feel lonely, we turn to social media to feel connected.

We used to have to make plans and then either follow through or stand someone up. Now we can cancel or change plans at any and every moment, and have an entire culture built around instantaneous last minute plan changing.

Now we are constantly consuming– articles, tweets, posts, emails, texts, feelings, thoughts, opinions, brands, images, videos, and more. We are never alone. We are never unplugged. We are are constantly aware that the whole big world, with all of it’s pain and suffering and brilliance and knowledge and support and humor and community, is RIGHT THERE. We know this, even when we turn our phones off, or leave them home.

It’s a different world now, and we live differently in it. But none of this is news.

You’re most likely a digital immigrant, too. The upcoming generations won’t remember another way of being. The digital natives won’t know what it felt like to ever be truly alone or disconnected or unplugged. They won’t know how it feels to be stood up, or to get really lost, or to figure out how to do something complicated without directions. I’m not saying any of this a bad thing. I am progressive at heart, and I see no benefit to resisting progress or clinging to the past.

Perhaps the digital natives will change the world for the better, because they will have been brought up on new ideas and ways of being. Perhaps they will naturally strike a peaceful balance with technology, and they won’t suffer as we do.

Because the thing is, us digital immigrants… we are suffering.

Our emigration to the digital era happened slowly enough that we didn’t realize what a big transition we were all going through, though it was fast enough to change every single aspect of our lives. I believe that many of us are still trying to catch up, and that there has been an extraordinary cost to our transition.

I’m not hating on the internet, mind you.

I talk to people all over the world every single day. I coach people on nearly every continent, and my social media community lives in every corner of the earth. I love the work I do, I love writing, I love being fully free and mobile… and yet.

And yet I experience an intense yearning to be in a room with other people and not feel the presence of our phones. I yearn for eye contact, and undistracted conversation, and the peace and simplicity that comes from knowing that nothing else is planned or available– this moment is the only option, so we may as well be fully present.

I also have a deep aching to be truly alone.

I turn my phone off sometimes, but I’m still never disconnected, because I know I’m only about 34 seconds away from it booting up. It’s like filling your cupboards with chocolate and then pretending it’s not there, so it doesn’t tempt you– the sensation is not the same as if it really wasn’t there.

I yearn to not know how to do something, or to not know what my friends are up to, or to not know that my peers have just launched a new product. I yearn to wonder, and guess, and daydream. I yearn to be bored and understimulated.

And I’m not alone.

When I speak of these feelings to other digital immigrants, there is an air of agreement.

“Yes,” they whisper. They share how compulsively they check their phones, how they can’t leave the office at the office, and how they “relax” with social media only to find themselves more anxious than when they started. They share how knowing the endless options of what they could be doing right now makes them feel constantly stressed and insecure and unsatisfied.

We are suffering for a lack of simplicity and true connection. We are suffering from an over-saturation of digital consumption and stimulation. We are suffering.

I believe we immigrants still need to learn how to thrive in this new world, likely with better boundaries, a stronger awareness of how things affect us, and a shift in priorities.

I have no idea what that will look like, but I suspect it begins with conversations like this one.

Thoughts?

Love, Jessi

The post The Struggle of a Digital Immigrant appeared first on Jessi Kneeland.

https://ift.tt/2HmkFJP

[ruthellisneda]

The Struggle of a Digital Immigrant

I am a digital immigrant.

When I was child, we had a phone attached to the wall, and couldn’t even see who was calling until we answered. We played outside, and occupied ourselves with imaginative games of make-believe and exploration. We had “quiet time” when my mom needed a break, and there was nothing in our rooms other than books and legos to distract us.

By the time I was in high school we had dial-up, so I could AIM chat with my friends, and download songs on Napster.

Never mind that dad needed us to get off RIGHT NOW because he was expecting a call, or that one song could literally take 6 hours to download– it was the beginning of digital connectivity. I could have secret chats with my friends without even making a phone call! I didn’t have to wait until the next day to find out the latest gossip! It was glorious.

Through AIM chat, I began to develop my very first digital identity, with creatively arranged song lyrics and quotes in my away message. It was my first clumsy attempt to digitally signal (through poorly veiled metaphors) what I wanted people to know about me.

“The shoes on my feet, I bought it. The clothes I’m wearing, I bought it. The rock I’m rockin’, I bought it. Cause I depend on me.”

Back then we could choose when to connect and when to disconnect; when to develop our digital identities, and when to develop our real-life identities. Only one of these happened at a time. When I spent time with my friends or family, we were the only people in the room.

Nowadays our digital and real life selves are blurred, and occur simultaneously, because every single moment of every single day, we are connected to everything and everyone.

Nowadays we have a hundred paused conversations happening at once, from text to email to facebook to twitter, with people all over the world, ready to be unpaused by just glancing at our phones. And our phones are with us at all times, which means that now when we spend time with friends or family, it’s never just us in the room.

The digital era has changed our lives. Now when we wonder something, we just look it up. If we think of someone, we text them. If we’re bored, we entertain ourselves. If we’re feeling bad about ourselves, we do something to feel “productive.” If we feel lonely, we turn to social media to feel connected.

We used to have to make plans and then either follow through or stand someone up. Now we can cancel or change plans at any and every moment, and have an entire culture built around instantaneous last minute plan changing.

Now we are constantly consuming– articles, tweets, posts, emails, texts, feelings, thoughts, opinions, brands, images, videos, and more. We are never alone. We are never unplugged. We are are constantly aware that the whole big world, with all of it’s pain and suffering and brilliance and knowledge and support and humor and community, is RIGHT THERE. We know this, even when we turn our phones off, or leave them home.

It’s a different world now, and we live differently in it. But none of this is news.

You’re most likely a digital immigrant, too. The upcoming generations won’t remember another way of being. The digital natives won’t know what it felt like to ever be truly alone or disconnected or unplugged. They won’t know how it feels to be stood up, or to get really lost, or to figure out how to do something complicated without directions. I’m not saying any of this a bad thing. I am progressive at heart, and I see no benefit to resisting progress or clinging to the past.

Perhaps the digital natives will change the world for the better, because they will have been brought up on new ideas and ways of being. Perhaps they will naturally strike a peaceful balance with technology, and they won’t suffer as we do.

Because the thing is, us digital immigrants… we are suffering.

Our emigration to the digital era happened slowly enough that we didn’t realize what a big transition we were all going through, though it was fast enough to change every single aspect of our lives. I believe that many of us are still trying to catch up, and that there has been an extraordinary cost to our transition.

I’m not hating on the internet, mind you.

I talk to people all over the world every single day. I coach people on nearly every continent, and my social media community lives in every corner of the earth. I love the work I do, I love writing, I love being fully free and mobile… and yet.

And yet I experience an intense yearning to be in a room with other people and not feel the presence of our phones. I yearn for eye contact, and undistracted conversation, and the peace and simplicity that comes from knowing that nothing else is planned or available– this moment is the only option, so we may as well be fully present.

I also have a deep aching to be truly alone.

I turn my phone off sometimes, but I’m still never disconnected, because I know I’m only about 34 seconds away from it booting up. It’s like filling your cupboards with chocolate and then pretending it’s not there, so it doesn’t tempt you– the sensation is not the same as if it really wasn’t there.

I yearn to not know how to do something, or to not know what my friends are up to, or to not know that my peers have just launched a new product. I yearn to wonder, and guess, and daydream. I yearn to be bored and understimulated.

And I’m not alone.

When I speak of these feelings to other digital immigrants, there is an air of agreement.

“Yes,” they whisper. They share how compulsively they check their phones, how they can’t leave the office at the office, and how they “relax” with social media only to find themselves more anxious than when they started. They share how knowing the endless options of what they could be doing right now makes them feel constantly stressed and insecure and unsatisfied.

We are suffering for a lack of simplicity and true connection. We are suffering from an over-saturation of digital consumption and stimulation. We are suffering.

I believe we immigrants still need to learn how to thrive in this new world, likely with better boundaries, a stronger awareness of how things affect us, and a shift in priorities.

I have no idea what that will look like, but I suspect it begins with conversations like this one.

Thoughts?

Love, Jessi

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