Mobiles can cut quality of life

One woman is checking her mobile. The other is day dreaming. I wonder if she feels the sea breeze and smells the salt air while she plans her next trip to Paris and thinks of the beautiful flowers she saw in the flower shop she passed on the way to the beach? Does her friend with the mobile notice any thing around her?

How often do you check your mobile? According to an article by  Trevor Wheelwright "The average American checks their phone 205 times a day, or almost once every five minutes while we’re awake."

That's far less than a BBC report which "found that adults in the US check their phones, on average, 344 times a day once every four minutes – and spend almost three hours a day on their devices in total."

I'm in the minority because I hate my mobile, which can do everything my laptop can and I don't need my laptop with me when I'm out of the house. 

Very few people have my number. They have other ways to reach me. Most of the time my phone is off so spam calls don't interrupt my day dreaming or observations of life all around me.

Today I was waiting in the driveway for a friend to pick me up. The blue sky against the green of a tree was spectacular. Birds were singing.  Flowers were beginning to bud in the rock garden. 

If I'd been looking at my phone I'd have missed all that. 

I consider myself a gold medalist day dreamer when I'm not observing everything around me. I can plan this or that, write my next chapter, a haiku, or a blog in my head. I can imagine a painting I love. I don't need to be reminded of the latest horrendous thing Trump did or whatever is happening in any of the current wars. I'll look at that stuff later.

To be fair to mobiles, in the Japanese restaurant, it was really handy to check the name of a person that neither of us could remember, but we weren't going to waste the precious time we have face-to-face on the phone.I've never understood why people who are together are looking at their phones. Mobiles are good when I'm meeting someone to tell them where I am or if I'll be late. They are good for emergencies, mine or those I witness, which is so seldom, it has never happened. Maybe that's why the Germans call mobiles Handy. 

My mobile was handy when I saw a straw nest on the way to the restaurant because I could take a photo. But, if I'd been engrossed in my mobile, would I have noticed it at all?