Hello everyone!

It’s….Monday.

The day started out beautifully here in the bay, but it soon turned hazy and rather stifling. Today, which also happened to be my last day of vacation, turned out to be a bit too much. It’s okay to have those days every-once-in-a-while, if you ask me. I did have a rather lovely weekend, and I promise to share more on the blog a little later.

Today, I wanted to share with you a channel that I’ve become rather attached to on Youtube. This will probably be rather ironic, because the theme of my post (like “I Can’t Read” from earlier this week) is the general preoccupation with electronics. This video-blog, also know widely on the internet as a Vlog, features the daily life of a young couple in London. Their weekly outings with their baby boy aka “Squeaky G,” their travels, adventures, etc. There’s something so incredibly endearing about them, and I’d like to think that we would be friends in real life, which is probably totally creepy. Aside from the fact that they’re an adorable family, the way they portray their lives is so refreshing and relatable. It’s not anything extraordinary, really just a techie guy and his makeup artist/stay at home mum wife , but I look forward to their videos every week. Here’s the latest:

They were my initial inspiration for “Blackout” night. They touch a little bit on the instant validation we get through our phones and social media: a retweet , or a ‘Like’ on Instagram or Facebook. It gives us attention we so naturally crave with the minimum amount of effort. It makes us feel connected even when our time is probably best spent connecting with the things and people physically present in our world, even if that sometimes means spending time totally alone.

I particularly enjoyed the excerpt featured from “The Independent,” also known as “The i,” in England is an article from Simon Kelner. It is both beautifully written and expresses a worrisome condition that I’ve become all too familiar with. (Note that the below is a transcript, rather than a direct quotation.)

“This morning, I couldn’t take my eyes off the landscape. Oxfordshire under a cloudless sky looked like a province; green, still, restful and sweeping. The only traces of the heat haze hung over the well-tended pastureland. You couldn’t see anything other than the indigenous trees, not a pine in sight. Horses stood quietly in paddocks. It was a vision of the countryside that was so perfect, as to be almost implausible. I stared out the window in awe and as deep as I could be in contemplation. And then I realized, I was the only person in the carriage who was living in the present. Every other person was hooked up to an electronic device. Some were switching between laptop and mobile- even the woman reading a book had earphones attached. Not a single passenger on the 720 to Marylebone was taking a blind bit of notice of the majestic scenery. It literally passed them by.” 

Here’s the thing:

It’s hard to unplug, and be alone.

I think it’s worth it, in the end. Not to put things in finite terms, but think of it like this: do you want to be the person behind the phone always experiencing life through a screen? Or would you rather just live it?

Just a few thoughts.

EVA♥