Plugging In

In any given day we make decision after decision about where, what and how our time and attention are spent. For me, that starts at 5:00 am as I get up and ready for work. After I make my way through the routine of hygiene, suiting up and giving my wife’s cat his morning tribute in the prayer that he may allow her to sleep past dawn, I step outside and open my phone for the first exchange with the digital world. I first open messenger, Facebook messaging app, and send my son his good morning and affirmation for the day. We no longer see each other physically very often, him being 19, and I juggling likely ten more responsibilities than I will in hindsight see as necessary when I’ve grown to the ripe old age of wisdom, so this ritual keeps us connected and keeps him knowing he’s on my mind each day.

Once in my car and on the road, my second dose is taken in not given out. I will in twenty minutes be slipping on that red coat of a Produce Manager and facing eleven hours of customers, employees, Store directors and supervisors, all with their own demands and needs that will not cease until the clock hits Five. So, I open my phone and my pandora music app, the free version of course, and while I know I am far too old to be doing so, I select early 200’s hip-hop and crank it up as if I’m not wearing argyle socks, a tie clip and a rather fashionable fedora concealing what I desperately call a “slightly” receding hairline.

Now that I have arrived at work, the phone is tucked away, for the moment, and will not be seen again until lunch.

Once lunch arrives, I step away for twenty-five amazing minutes, department, employees and even our valued customers not even a thought in my mind. I stand outside and open again my iPhone, this time to open our school webpage. I check my postings, announcements, any posted grades and discussion replies. In doing these one of three things occurs. I find I have done very well and sigh a breath of relief knowing I can actually make it to post-dinner before addressing more coursework. I find I have drastically overestimated my most recent efforts and, in a panic, begin reviewing, rewriting or studying for the next assignment to be sure I make up the ground. This will include google searches, updates on the school run discussion board and likely a check of my e-mail for any relevant guidance I may have missed. Or, most often, I find I have done as well as I thought and as such just slightly consider the evenings coursework ahead of time, not because the fleeting five minutes of research on google ACTUALLY helps, but it does make me feel more prepared, an illusion I know.

Back to work and again a departure from the phone. Five o’clock comes, mercifully it always does, and again I am in the car. However, unlike this morning I am not half awake, I have my good senses, and I know that I need something much deeper than the bassline. So, I open podcasts on my iPhone and select the sermon I am currently listening to. This morning I needed motivation, a laugh, a familiar secular pleasure now, hours later, several misspoken words, quite a few grievances, and perhaps an outburst or two of some words not likely seen in the red letters of the testament, and I know I need grounding, guidance, a reset for my spirit so that in twenty minutes when I get home, to the garden, the sixteen year old daughter, the overworked amazing wife, and the necessary several hours of coursework before collapsing in bed, each of them gets the me they deserve and see so seldomly.

After dinner together, a guarantee that life’s pace is not allowed to interrupt, and when domestic responsibilities are complete, I ascend the stairs to our room and to the most comfortable leather chair man ever made, bought as a gift from that amazing woman I mentioned earlier.

As I sit, it’s the computer not the phone being opened. I access our school site and set to the coursework. This exchange with the digital world will include our school site, any digital coursebooks currently relevant, almost always a trip with google, even if just to check a definition or spelling, and often enough an exchange of discussion posts with fellow classmates. Once I feel I have sufficiently caught up and maybe even got a smidge ahead in case tomorrow burns to the ground unexpectedly, seriously I’m not overanxious by any means, I go about showering, shaving, laying out my work clothes, and then my last two doses of the external digital world.

The first, after I have read to our daughter and done my own reading, I open my bible app, look up the daily scripture, and share it with a few friends, something we’ve done for a long while, sometimes just a verse and others a lengthy exchange.

And as a finale, I sit, a snack of delicious trail mix and an ice-cold milk, and I open TUBI, a free streaming service for movies, TV and the like, I select a documentary, usually historical as I am a bit of an old nerd, and I chew and learn for the most content several minutes of the day that started 16 short hours ago.

In each of these interactions I have a different experience with technology. In messaging my son, or sharing scripture, I feel fulfilled, purposeful, like my time is well spent. In music listening or documentary watching, I am entertained, relaxed, it is a pleasure to be enjoyed. When I utilize our schools’ sites and resources, though it can be anxiety producing, frustrating, or at times difficult, when it’s completed, I feel accomplished, closer to my goal and as if I am making ground in life. In listening to sermons, I feel guided, reassured, and at times even convicted, which is the point of any spiritual or personal growth. We need to know the direction and steps to take, we need to feel when the steps we are taking are right, and we need to be aware when the choices made are leading down a path we wish not to travel.

From a marketing perspective, every aspect of modern human life is woven in and through technology. It is inescapable and not likely to revert. In most of the digital content we consume there is advertising, even in ways we may not think to notice. As I open google there are top suggested searches, sponsored and not, funneling my attention where people want it to be. Pandora plays paid advertisements between songs on its free service, so while I’m enjoying music and likely in a good mood, marketers are injecting their messaging to someone who may be very likely to be willing to receive it. When watching a show on TUBI, there are regular advertisement breaks, and as I am mid show or movie, they can pretty well be sure even if I don’t want to be marketed to, I do want to continue my show, so they have a captive audience.

Marketers have, and utilize, the opportunity through our consumption and reliance on digital media, to access so much more of our time and attention than was traditionally available solely through print ad, TV commercials, and mailers. Those methods we crossed paths with occasionally throughout our day. Current marketers have the opportunity to interact with consumers at almost every point of the average person’s day, if they know where and how to be there to do so.