Could You Cope with Being Unplugged for 24hrs?

A friend of mine announced on Facebook that it was going to be National Unplugged Day on the 28th July. As my husband is a complete tech head and gadget geek, I immediately tagged his name into the post. But since I have been blogging, I seriously doubted whether I would have the stamina to have a device detox either.

That aside, I was up for the challenge.

Preparing for the Challenge

I popped it into my Google+ calendar and set an alarm on my mobile phone. I know, the irony right! Even so, I managed to forget it was happening until my husband asked the day before ‘So are we seriously doing this unplug thing?’ Oh crap, I had just baked a lovely Carrot Cake with a recipe all to type and post in time few a couple of linkys on the day of the Unplug.

Image from http://copy-create.com/?p=1067

Frantically typing it up Saturday night as well as scheduling some pictures posts, tweets and Klout posts, I was thinking to myself this was going to be harder than I thought. I have been working so hard at my blog lately, trying to get it off the ground and the social network side of things is just addictive in itself. Anyone with facebook, twitter, instagram or any other network account, would agree that refreshing the page to check if anyone else had liked a post can become ritualistic.

Having set up all my schedules, I could breathe and look forward to a day without constantly checking a screen. And I did enjoy it. Mostly…

The positive of unplugging

1. I had more time for the children. I will be one to admit that I probably spend too much time checking my phone or typing on the laptop. So yesterday was great to be able to give my full attention, all day, to both my kids and my husband. We went out for lunch and chatted, uninterrupted, at the table. My husband played a lot more with both Lil Man and Baby, which took pressure off me too.

Image from http://www.create-the-good-life.com/unplug_and_play.html

1. Less stress. Without our devices it meant neither of us were getting worked up over a file being accidentally deleted or a file not saving properly. Less stress meant more fun.
2. Enjoying the moment. Rather than taking photos every 5 minutes or noting ideas about what I would blog about our day, I simply soaked up the moment and took it all in. Like how my daughter was rolling onto her side and nearly making it onto her tummy. And my son learning new words; we had quite a laugh with this one seeing how long or complicated a word he could repeat in a high pitched, squeaky little voice (the best one was ‘dystopia’ ha ha).

The Downsides

1. Getting lost. We thought it would be nice to have a day out somewhere we hadn’t been for a while and is about 40 minutes away in the car. Having relied on a sat nav to get to this destination every other time, we only had a rough idea of how to get there. It doesn’t help that most of the way is country roads, which all  look the same. Coming home, we managed to get lost. Twice. And added twenty minutes to the journey. Fortunately, we had all been fed, watered and had a wee before we set off so it wasn’t as stressful as it could have been.
2. Bad plan making. Not being able to check the weather online or using an app, we (stupidly) assumed the weather would have stayed hot and sunny. It didn’t. So we were on our way to Promenade Park where there is an abundance of green parks to walk round and a miniature man-made beach as well as a water fountain play area for the kids. All in shorts and vests, we were shivering as we stepped out of the car into the pissing rain.

Other than these inconveniences, it was an enjoyable day as a family and as much as I would have loved to have shared some pictures from our day, I chose to #unplug.

Did you join the National Unplugged Day? Could you live without your devices for 24 hours or longer?