Time and Connectivity

​When my mother and grandmother used to travel with me a hundred years ago before the omnipresence of smartphones and social media (heck, the Internet was not even a “thing” yet!), we’d pack our bags and head out of the country for two weeks or longer.  

The only contact we’d have with the folks back home was a postcard here and there, and sometimes maybe one long distance phone call just to let everyone know we’d arrived safely or something. There were no Facebook updates, Instagram photos or Twitter hashtags - people back home simply had to wait for the in-person update when we got back home at the end of the trip.  

The payoff for this was that while traveling, we were fully immersed in the moment, conscious of the experiences we were having and the people we were having them with.

Tin Can Phone reblogged from Netskills Voices

Unless you want to spend silly amounts of time and money surfing ridiculously slow internet the lobby of your dilapidated hotel, Cuba offers an opportunity to go “old school” for your vacation, as ubiquitous and accessible wifi is still an emerging concept here.  

And that’s just what we did, my boys and I.

Alex and Simon and I left our devices at home when we headed out the door to the airport at 3:30 a.m. last Friday morning, and I’m grateful that we did so.

Withdrawal Symptoms

I should preface my praises for disconnecting with an admission that I had some pretty significant anxiety the first 48 hours without my smartphone.  

For starters, feeling for that little key to the world in my pocket at all times has become almost a subconscious habit. I literally would reach for my iPhone multiple times a day: While standing in line at the airport, while waiting for the hotel shuttle bus to arrive at the airport, and at many other times once at the resort, just to check email, texts or update my Instagram feed. It was a surprise to me every time at first that the phone wasn't there!

Another thing I missed was the ability to look things up in a flash:

• Does the Delfinaro in Varadero violate animal rights? (maybe)  
• When was the “Special Period”?  (1990-2005-ish)
• How far is it from our Casa Particular to the Malecon  (about a block, as it turned out!)

With the exception of the latter fact, which we were able to find out fairly quickly by looking at one of the maps in our Lonely Planet Cuba Guide  and by simply walking around after checking in with our Casa owner, all my “need to know” questions had to wait until I could find someone  to engage with who spoke enough English and knew more about Cuba than where the nearest bar was at the all-inclusive resort.  Or wait until our return to Canada and the relatively fast, free wifi we enjoy here.

Finally, being out of text, phone or email range from my partner for a full week was a bit unnerving at first, since we’d never been apart for any length of time without some sort of digital access before. But “absence makes the heart grow fonder” as they say, and in the end, it was probably a good and healthy thing to have such a clearly demarked break from one another.

Time

Being without my phone also meant having relatively little idea of what time it was, most of the time. Our resort lobby had a clock, as did the living room in the Havana Casa Particular where we spent a night, but other than that, we basically had to gauge what time it was by estimating the passage of time since our last confirmation, or checking -- in the morning and early evening -- by how bright it was outside.  

That was a bit of a strange feeling at first, since I am so used to living by the clock (10-o-clock meeting, 2 p.m. deadline, 6 p.m. dinner, “family time” 7:30 - 8:15, kids’ tuck-in at 9, and so on).

But it didn’t take long to let go of the stringent schedule, and just respond to our mental and physical sense of what we “should” be doing at different points throughout the day.

Freedom

Being free from daily reminders of all the lunacy going on in the world due to limited access to news of the latest racism, homophobia and misogyny in governments nearby was a welcome break.

After the initial awkwardness of feeling like we had to constantly know what time it was and whether anyone had texted us or updated their Youtube or Instagram feeds in the past three minutes, things started to get a whole lot better.

Unplugging reblogged from Litpark.com

I began to read the book I had brought with me, and got so into it that I felt compelled to read aloud sections to the boys.  They in turn became fascinated by Trevor Noah’s coming-of-age tales from Apartheid South Africa and demanded I keep reading more.  This became a daily ritual, at the beach, by the pool, in the hotel lobby…
​
Cards were big, too: On the bus to Havana, in the brief moments we spent in our hotel room during transitions, and under the shade of our beach umbrella, the boys played everything from 21 to Crazy 8s to President, and I was obliged to join them.

We played more cards this week than in the past 12 months!

reblogged from roughwighting.com

The best thing about being disconnected was that the daily digital distraction of the device was replaced by an ever-increasing, in-the-moment appreciation of the sights, sounds and other sensual flavours all around: The azures and aqua-marines of the Atlantic mesmerized me, and not just for a moment while I grabbed my phone to snap a photo to post on social media.  

Nopes, not having the temptation of my digital device at my fingertips for a week meant I had the freedom to just stare out at the ocean and enjoy the view for a full ten minutes, or an hour, or all day, as I basically did at least once during our time in Varadero.  It also meant that I would often glance up from my book, rather than being sucked in by the endless labyrinth that a screen and internet access provides, and enjoy magical moments that my 12-year-old twins were sharing with one another in the ocean, on the beach, doing card tricks, or engrossed in a good book together.

Vacation Photos

One facet of leaving my phone at home that had made me particularly nervous was the absence of a camera. But once on vacation, the boys and I quickly adopted the habit of capturing moments in our memories by pausing and holding our hands up to our face and making a “click” sound whenever something especially wondrous caught our eye.

We also spent some time each day completing the travel journals I had prepared for them ahead of time, though truth be told, Alex and I were considerably more enthusiastic about and committed to this little project than Simon was.

I am hoping to blog my own travel journal notes when I have some time over the coming week, so that the wonderful memories don’t fade too far into the mental abyss -- while more comprehensive than photos, memories do tend to have a far shorter lifespan than digital images!

reblogged from the Grovecog

I recognize that the Internet provides access to a global network of knowledge and perspective, and that these things often translate into power, and in general I am in strong favour of access as a fundamental human right in the 21 Century. Nevertheless,  given our privileged position as westerners not living below the poverty line in a country where we have the luxury of consistent access, I feel that our brief hiatus from the world wide web was a beneficial one for us. The peace and reduced sense of urgency facilitated by the absence of constant connection to the outside was a feeling I'd not had in a long time.

All in all, I am in favour of such regular unpluggings, and am thinking of practical ways to make purposeful internet and social media breaks a part of our family’s regular routine.