THE LONGEST DAY

This assignment was not so difficult for me to accomplish, but I cheated a little bit. My longest day consisted of a lot of shopping, eating, reading, and sleeping. I was on spring break vacation in Boston and had a busy day already planned. I knew I was not going to be using my cell phone much during the entire week I was there, but I purposefully picked the day I would be the most busy.

After waking up after a very very good and long night's rest, I had to restrain myself from automatically going to my laptop on the kitchen table and start checking messages and the news. Instead, I lounged for a little bit before making breakfast. I had an advantage to my situation since the people that I was going to be hanging out with were already in the apartment I was staying in. I had already been there for a couple days and my friend flew in the day before. There was no need to call or plan. Instead, we all discussed plans to go out and decided to go to Newbury Street for some intense shopping downtown. My one friend had to leave early to go to class but we made it clear that I would see him back at his place when he was out.

I was in the city so where I would normally have slipped on my iPod headphones, I conversed with my friend sitting next to me. Because we were out of our element there was a lot to comment on about our surroundings and other places to visit. When we got back, my friend showed up back from class a little while later, we went out to dinner, and headed out to lounges where music was blasting over big speakers.

It’s unfair to say that I rightfully accomplished this task. I was surrounded by people whom I could interact with without having to pursue human contact through the internet. I was with someone who was familiar with the area, so there was no need for me to look up addresses and maps online. I filled up my day so I would not have sat at home staring at walls all day long. Plus, I was on vacation and I usually do not worry about using cell phones and iPods and the internet as much as I would if I were back home. Despite my instinctive compulsive need to check messages constantly, I had constant face-to-face human interaction to soak up my attention. There was a moment where a cell phone would have been essentially necessary to let my friend know that we were coming back to the apartment, but I already had a copy of the key so there was no need.

I found it interesting to see how much of a big (and sometimes very subtle) role music had in my every day life. Going in and out of shops there were some that had music blasting, and other stores where there was complete silence except for the occasional screeching of hangers on a wire rack, or the rustling of other shoppers trying on clothes. Music adds to the image of the type of person that shops at certain places. It tells the consumer that the type of person who would ideally shop there would listen to this kind of music. It defined the type of people that were at the lounges I went to at night.

So much for “struggling” with this task, I do remember when it was extremely hard for me to deal with a lack of technology in my daily life. Whenever there are blackouts in my house I have such a hard time handling it. Your world simply shrinks because all you have are the basic things in front of you. We are always looking for things to occupy our mind and time, and to not have access to so many things we depend on for entertainment is tough, and even stressful. Boredom ensues, and most resort to sleeping. I am forced to go back to a hobby of my childhood-reading books.

Despite how I approached this assignment, I still learned a couple things. One is that I have this need to be updated all the time. I check for the news constantly through the day, so the next day I felt so disconnected with the world. There was so much to catch up on and it was a little daunting to have missed so much that had happened in one day. It felt like time slowed down since there was nothing to essentially be used as “fillers” like how TV and radio can be. Planning was also a very big important thing I had to deal with. With the advent of cell phones, spontaneity and last minute changes to plans were feasible and now made common. Instead of changing plans, I would find myself to have to wait until I met up friends later to make sure everyone was on the same page. It delayed things and the fact that I had to wait drove me crazy. Our dependence on media has created a lack of patience and an acute attention deficit disorder among the public.

The fact that I couldn’t check my Facebook drove me crazy. I know that whenever I am online and even working on this assignment as I write this, I occasionally simply click on my Facebook link to check for any updates. It really is a compulsion. When I am home I am somehow attached to some type of electronic media all the time, whether it is music playing or me looking up something on the internet. I literally have to leave my house to get away from this type of attachment because it has become such an integral part of my life. I hate silence. My dependence on the media is huge, but I have also come to remember that there are other things I can do to serve the same purposes as electronic media.