I'm in that last-minute panic mode as we pack up our home for the weekend, checking lights, windows, and doors. I grab my camera bag, wallet and keys as I lock the front door. We all pile in the car, and I catch my breath.
We are ten minutes into the trip, on the highway, and it hits me. My phone; where's my phone? We call it, and it doesn't ring. It's sitting in my other bag that's hanging on the bedroom door handle.
I have a sense of panic as one of my boys is staying home for work, and while he is old enough to look after himself, I still like to have that contact. We are also in the middle of the atelier, I'm mentoring, and I have clients who I have been waiting on a reply. I'm loading up the reasons to turn around, and yet I know it's all covered. It's a gift, not a problem, and I can let myself relax into a 3-day social media break.
I won't lie the impulse to check my phone was strong, very strong. My mental list of things to do or follow-up was dinging in my mind. It's the let-down feeling that I can't grab my phone that I notice the most. It's like expecting to pinch a cheeky chocolate only to find that the box is empty. It's disappointment rolled in frustration that they have found your hiding place.

But slowly, I notice that I am looking up more, looking at the world, rather than my mobile. I was reading ( I almost read a book in two days) I was exploring, and I was present with my family. I was relaxed.
The biggest hit came when we arrived home, and I had the overwhelming urge to find my phone. It was such a force, and I felt wildly drawn to run through the missed messages and calls. I didn't! I forced myself to wait as I knew this relaxed feeling would float away. I didn't want to rush back.
Without the buzz, I looked up. I looked up; it's such a simple sentence but our phones, it's apps, are teaching us to look down. We are missing life, the beauty, the ordinary as we gaze downwards. We are distracted in the worst way, and somehow we have to find a balance.
I don't know when the shift happened from printing photos to hold in our hands to looking down at your phone, but I miss it. I miss flipping through the pages of albums and feeling the paper in my hands. I miss the writing on the back to let me know who is in the photo and what year someone took it. I miss the emotion and the instant connection that you feel when you look at a long lost relative or friend you haven't seen in years.
Maybe, it's my nostalgia in overdrive or that Chloe and I were talking about printing photos as an activity in the atelier; I'm not sure. Either way, it feels more in tune with my why then the scrolling through the lovely squares on Instagram. I do know I need to balance my digital world with the tangible, that I have fallen too far to one side.
We are visual people, who create with our eyes, who see emotion, who feel moments before they happen, but are we looking up? Perhaps we need to write more, print more, see more, do more.

Let's look up, not down. Let's print, not scroll.
Let's write, not text. Let’s draw, not meme.

Let’s grab hold of the tangible.

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