Digital Device drama
This morning, as I sat down to prepare my blog on my personal digital inventory, I decided there is no better way to start than to choose my picture for this blog. As you may have figured out by now, pictures are my favorite way to tell a story. Immediately, I went to my "tech box" in search of my white external hard drive, where I have stored every picture I have taken since probably 2015. At first, I couldn't find the hard drive, so I began looking in other places like my camera bag, my office drawers, even my husband's office. Panic began to set in as I realized this precious white box, with almost a decade of pictures on it, was nowhere to be found. For the next hour, I went back and forth, checking and rechecking every place the hard drive could possibly be. After no success, I sat down to take a breather and think of any other place I hadn't looked.
Then it hit me.
I had been looking for the actual hard drive, and not the case that it comes in. I went straight to my camera bag and sure enough, my external hard drive was sitting in it's black case, mixed in with all of my other gear.
Thus, I discovered that the best way to take stock of one's personal digital inventory, is to lose one's personal digital devices.
Like many people in their mid 20's, I have accumulated a variety of digital devices that have their own unique purpose. I use my personal laptop and ipad primarily for school work, personal work, and photography related projects. Then there is, of course, my camera equipment, which I consider to be part of my inventory. I use a Canon EOS 90D, which I recently upgraded from a T5. When I'm not working on school work, day work, or photography, I can most likely be seen scrolling my social media apps, including:
- Snapchat
Regardless of all of the access I have to digital media, I have actually decided that this year I would like to focus on stepping back from my digital consumption. I have found that is so easy for me to waste away the hours of the day by scrolling on my phone, or getting caught in my email.
Below is a picture of the "well-being" breakdown that my phone offers to help me keep track of how I use my time.
My husband and I have actually used this created a competition. At the end of the day, we compare our digital well-being scores to see how much time we spend on our devices. While I enjoy the digital resources I do have, I want to make sure that I don't forget to take to stock of more valuable inventory in my life, like family and friends.
So now I encourage you to ask yourself, what is your digital well-being score?
