What a strange weekend it was to be in a remote wilderness and mostly away from all the terrible news from Paris. At first I felt out of the loop, not able to follow all that was going on. Sticking my head in the desert sand instead of reacting with everyone else. But then I saw some people tearing each other down instead of uniting in solidarity, and people responding to the vitriol with even more anger...petty arguments about profile pics or which deadly attack is worse.

Suddenly I preferred my place outside the loop. I took a deep breath, turned my phone off, and returned to the freedom of disconnection. Staying away from the news/opinion/anger on FB/NPR/CNN didn't mean I was ignorant, it just meant I was giving myself the space to have a solemnly personal response instead of the knee-jerk public reaction our social media demands.

​Though I highly recommend it, you don't have to go to Joshua Tree to have a moment of peace amongst all the negativity. What if we each turned down the noise a bit? What if we all shut up for ten seconds to respond instead of react? What if it gets so quiet we start to actually hear ourselves again? This is mindfulness, and I think the world needs it now more than ever.

I'm changing my Facebook phone- relationship status to "it's complicated."

I both love and hate my this little pocket machine. On the one hand, it’s a fantastic tool for connecting with friends and family, educating ourselves, being prepared for the weather or traffic, becoming budding artists/photographers/writers, and overall allowing us to be more interested and aware people. On the other hand though, it distracts from the real world around us, encourages FOMO and jealousy, thrusts douchebaggery to the forefront, hides us behind an avatar curtain so we sometimes end up acting extra douchey ourselves, and the list goes on.

One reason I love hiking and camping is that, more often than not, there is no phone reception. It’s a trick I use to escape, decompress, and reconnect with myself and the world around me.

Recently though, I visited Death Valley National Park, and while the vast majority of the park is cell-phone-free, the small town where I camped still had a few bars of service. Cue the complicated mix of love/hate emotions:

I loved that I could text my mom and my man that I arrived safe. I loved the ability to text friends when I got bored. I loved that I could post to Instagram because photography gives me joy. I loved that I could Google lists of Death Valley hikes and sites instead of flying solo.

But... I hated that I wouldn’t be able to feel the freedom of disconnection. I hated that I wasn’t forced to be bored, and forced to be OK with it. I hated that after I had a little whisky I started checking Facebook to pass the time, instead of reading, writing, or just being. I hated that it all made me feel less mindful.

I’ve written before about how the distraction of our smartphone is a distraction of our own making. Quite simply, we can log off any apps that bother us or just put the phone down. But you you know as well as I, that’s way easier said than done.

We all have a complicated relationship with our smartphones. Sometimes we laugh the afternoon away texting with a friend and sometimes we thumb-type seriously stupid things in anger. Sometimes we snuggle with our phone in bed and sometimes we want to throw it across the room.

The trick for me, and with most things in life, is to find a balance. In order to be mindful we shouldn’t have to give up on all modern conveniences to live in a shack in the woods. I should be able to use all the great and worthy features of my smartphone but also be OK with setting it down for periods of time. There’s room in this life for both mindlessness and mindfulness.

I'm about to head to Joshua Tree National Park with a small group of friends for a stargazing weekend. I stayed at this very campground last August so I know for sure that my phone won’t work. I’m looking forward to it, and getting out in nature is a great way for any of us to get a little more mindful.

But in two days I’ll be back in the city. The phone and my love/hate relationship with it will still exist. You can’t just run away from your problems, you have to face them head on. 

So I’m going to make an effort to learn from my complicated relationship -- let the things I love about my smartphone help me use it more wisely, while letting the things I hate about it remind me to take a break once in awhile.

It’s a worthy endeavor, for all of us. Make a list of all the things you both love and hate about our modern technologies. Then use both the negative and the positive to inspire you toward balance.

Finding mindfulness isn't like flipping a switch.

Most of us can’t simply will ourselves into a state of zen like a Tibetan monk—the modern age and our overactive minds simply won’t allow it. So I look to the outside world for help. Be it through nature, exercise, apps, travel, everyday choices, or habits, we can use all sorts of methods to nudge ourselves to a more present state.

One significant piece of my own personal outside world is my dog, Rocco. To put it bluntly, I love him to death. He always makes me smile and helps me forget whatever worry has been overwhelming my mind on a given day.

I was thinking about him, and the larger infatuation many of us have with our pets, and suddenly it dawned on me—my dog is another one of the ways I nudge myself, often subconsciously, to get out of my head and live in the present.

My dog teaches me mindfulness.

The connection we have to our pets is multi-layered. No doubt, they provide us with companionship, unconditional love, snuggles and a great way to connect to other similarly passionate pet people. But there’s a deeper attachment that goes beyond the obvious. I propose a new theory—that we’re fanatically attached to our pets because they constantly teach us an important lesson about ourselves.

Our pets take us out of our complicated adult lives for a moment, and back to a more mindful time—a time of youthful exuberance, a time before we were corrupted by the modern distracted world. They remind us of how we were then, and as such, remind us to try and a be little more like that again—right now.

My dog Rocco is possibly the most zen being I know. He doesn’t worry about the future, except perhaps starting around four o’clock in the afternoon, when he knows dinner is imminent. He doesn’t stress over the decisions he makes, for instance—choosing which sunbeam to sleep in.

He doesn’t regret his mistakes, even after tearing apart one of his favorite toys. He’s always enthusiastic when I take him on his morning walk, even if he had to wait while I procrastinated on Facebook. He jumps for joy at every treat, even if he’d always rather have bacon. He accepts all the snuggles and love I give, not worried about what other thing he might be missing out on.

He’s also a big part of my favorite trick to get more mindful—nature. I hike a few times a week. The trails provide me with a level of exercise that keeps me physically fit and a level of peace and beauty that keeps me mentally fit.

I often take Rocco on these hikes, and rather than take away from the moment of zen the wild gives me, he adds a whole new layer of zen that only enhances the experience. The exuberance he displays when I untether his leash adds to the exuberance I feel when I untether from the stress of city life.

His curiosity to explore a new landscape—the trees, shrubs, vistas, wildlife and of course smells—brings me to a more mindfully aware state that bleeds into the rest of my day, on the trail and off. His consistent desire to stay close to me as we hike brings me an understanding of uncorrupted loyalty that I can carry with me into the human relationships of my everyday life.

As a hiking partner, not only is he good at keeping up with my pace, he’s good at setting the pace for a mindful existence.

I could go on and on, but you get the point. Rocco is my little yogi zen master. He doesn’t tell me how to live my life, but instead, he provides an example of a simpler way to live.

Obviously, not all dogs are the same, and maybe I’m just lucky to have such an interested and present pooch. But I do think most dogs, most cats (I grew up with many) and most pets in general, have all these qualities to some degree. And it’s for those reasons we’re so drawn to them.

When I’m feeling down, angry, stressed or worried about the future, I can look at Rocco and see a better way—a more simple, honest, mindful way.

Maybe this is one of the reasons I love him so much.

We’re all complicated humans, so it’s unrealistic to expect to live our lives with the same sincerity as our pets. It’s the cross of self-awareness we have to bear as a species.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from our furry companions—that we can’t take a moment to be with them in the moment, or that we can’t take the smile they give us and carry it with us as we go about our convoluted day.

In that way, our pets are giving us the gift of mindfulness all the time. It’s up to us if we choose to accept it.​

I love to make plans and I'm a bit of perfectionist. Sometimes these are great attributes, like when I need to plan a big trip with a hundred moving parts (and do so expertly, I might add). Sometimes though, my perfectionist streak drives me crazy, like when one or more of those hundred moving parts starts to move in the wrong direction.

Recently, I was lucky enough to go to New Zealand. I went to sojourn with my man who was there for work, which means I was there to keep him company during his off time but I also had free time to do my favorite thing in the world... explore. I was going to learn about kiwi and Maori culture, hike over green hillsides and through rainforests, visit one of the oldest national parks in the world, see volcanoes and glaciers, get new perspectives, write lots of blog posts, and hopefully meet a few hobbits.

Boy did I have a ton of plans for this trip, but boy did life have other plans for me. And bare with me here, but boy am I glad life changed all my plans. Not because I enjoy it when all my efforts fly out the window and those plans suddenly change, and not because  (spoiler alert) I enjoy being sick on the other side of the international date line, but because of the lesson in mindfulness the whole crazy experience gave me.

As soon as I arrived in New Zealand I got sick. For those of you who know me, you know I was also just sick for 2 weeks in early September. Sick sick sicky sick. Being sick is always struggle to some degree, but being sick abroad was a struggle on a whole new level.

Side note: I've been debating just how much I want to divulge on this. I don't make it a point to whine, at least publicly. I don't like to worry anyone or act needy, so I largely kept this under wraps. Aside from one semi-vague Instagram post, and texts with close friends, very few people knew I was sick out there.

But I'm trying to use this all as a lesson, one I can learn from and then one I'll tell you about so you can hopefully learn from as well. If I'm going to do that I need to let down my guard and take down the walls of privacy and vanity.

As you can imagine, I spent a lot of this time feeling frustrated - all my well thought out plans dashed, my normally active self tied to a hotel bed, my love of exploring new territories and cultures stymied, hopes of a "perfect trip" lost.

But that frustration, like any difficult time, was also an opportunity.
Difficulty presents us with a personal mindfulness challenge. 

It always boils down to a choice: let the disappointment of an international exploration opportunity lost overtake me with anger and regret, OR use it as an excuse to reconnect to mindfulness and then use/enjoy every moment I do have for all its worth.

Through painstaking effort, I chose the later. When I felt well enough to go exploring for a bit, I made sure to soak in every last second of the experience. When my throat was calm enough to allow a proper dinner, I savored every bite, and let myself have a glass of wine or a beer because I was on vacation goshdarnit. When I was awake and aware I made myself ever present and shook the chains of distraction loose.

Because of the illness, I knew I'd have fewer moments of enjoyment on my trip, so I mindfully dove into any moment in had with gusto. Suddenly my time became less about the limitations of being sick, and more about the joy to be found in the random moments.

I can have a memorable time whether or not everything goes exactly the way I expect. I can make good use of my time even if plans fall through. I can have a totally new and unexpected adventure even when things don't line up as I'd hoped.

I can be frustrated and angry that this trip didn't go the way I hoped it would go, or I can accept that it changed and make the most of it... roll with the punches, go with the flow.

My attitude about it, about anything, is entirely up to me.

So make plans, set expectations, and do your best work to make sure everything goes your way - lord knows I'll never stop doing that - but make sure one of your expectations is that it's possible none of your expectations will actually come true. Life will take you where it wants, you can fight and lament and whine and cry but the change in your path will often happen whether you like it or not. It's way better for your sanity to just accept it and go with the flow.

"What is your adventure?"

My former boss and current mentor, the wildly astute Gigi Johnson, recently posed this question on Facebook. She's says that when she meets people now, she asks them about their adventure instead of asking "what do you do?" or "where are you from?" as her opening salvo.

"How do you present your path when you meet people? Are you a name, job title, and city? Are you a noun, verb, or journey?"

I love everything about this. For years I've held disdain for the requisite "what do you do?" interrogation, as if somehow your whole life story, everything that you are, can be boiled down to a job title.

Maybe for some, what you do as a profession really is your whole life. But for most of us, I think it's only one small part of a much larger 3D puzzle that makes up each of our personal worlds.

For me lately, the "what I do?" question has required a complicated response. As far as the basic question goes, what I "do" is nothing because I don't have a full-time job. I make some mind-numbing side money driving for Lyft, but that's not what I "do."

What I do is my adventure. I write this blog. I travel as much as I can afford. I hike as often as my body will allow. I do yoga and meditate for my sanity. I volunteer for TreePeople in forest care and the Sierra Club in political advocacy. I’m looking into becoming a volunteer naturalist, leading nature walks for school children. I’ve even found some paid environmental educator training programs that would let me go live in the the Santa Monica Mountains and Channel Islands National Park for a time.

In the grand scheme, my goal is to spend my time bettering my soul, so that when I do find something to "do" again (you know, a job), it will be the right thing to do -- something that allows me to follow my passion and enriches my mind. So another thing I do is apply to real and meaningful jobs with environmental organizations that should help me to find a real and meaningful life. Or rather, continue the real and meaningful life I'm attempting to lead.

Hopefully what you do is something amazing, but hopefully your adventure means even more than that. 

What’s your adventure? 

There’s that moment when you switch off airplane mode on your phone and the only message you see in the upper-corner, coverage indicator area is “Searching…”

It’s the moment when you're about to reconnect from whatever escape you were just on. The moment you return from whatever forced you to disconnect in the first place, be it from going to a movie, hiking or camping in the mountains, or maybe actually being on an airplane.

For me, it’s the moment I switch from the relative calm of searching for myself in the real world, back to the unending search for signals and distractions in digital world.

I write a lot about distraction and disconnection here, not because I’ve got it all figured out, but because it’s an issue I struggle with, especially with finding a balance between the two.

It’s way too easy for me to get on my phone and spend hours on mindless tasks, and when I say hours it's no exaggeration. One Google search easily turns into ten, twenty, thirty. One article turns into a clickhole of largely meaningless and depressing news information gathering. A momentary check of Facebook quickly turns into an hour of “just scroll a little bit more!” Most days, being on my phone is the first thing I do in the morning, the last thing I do at night, and the thing I do many times in between to pass the time.

All of this is just a way I trick my mind into thinking it’s being productive, when in reality most of what I’m doing is entirely inconsequential. Worse, these are all things that take away from the time I could be doing something real, like writing this blog, or hiking, or connecting with friends, or applying for jobs, or calling my mother.

So when I disconnect, it’s for a purpose. When I disconnect, I do it so I can go searching instead.…

Searching for mindfulness.
Searching for my thoughts.
Searching for meaning.
Searching for me.

Not long ago I came back down the mountain from an excellent camping trip with a group of some of my closest friends. When we got close to the valley floor I switched off airplane mode and immediately began staring at that “Searching…” message in the upper corner, intently waiting for all those bars and signals to escort me back to the modern world.

But after a 10 second attempt, it gave me the “No Service” message instead of bars. I was disappointed, of course. I was eager to post to Instagram and Facebook to share with you all the majesty of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, John Muir’s Range of Light.

But then I remembered “Searching…”

When my phone was in airplane mode that weekend, instead of searching for a signal the whole time, I was doing the searching instead. It allowed me to read and spend quiet time with my own thoughts. It allowed me to share my love of camping with friends who hadn’t been in ages. It allowed me to watch as those friends’ eyes opened to the lessons of comfort, distraction, and expectation that come from the remote camping experience. It allowed us all to be present with each other in a way we’ve never been before, to bond in ways you can’t predict or replicate.

When I let my device do the searching, that means I’m searching for a way out. An excuse to be somewhere else. To add yet another method of distraction to my over-complicated world.

When I do the searching myself, that means I’m finally living.

I switched my phone back into airplane mode. This was the last moment of disconnection I would have for a while. It was our last moments together without all those distractions. Our last moments in the real world. And besides, I didn’t have a signal anyway.

Phone coverage will come and go, but what are you really searching for?

Are you searching for a constant digital connection using a combination of letters and pictures, or a perhaps more intermittent but deeper and more direct connection with those you actually care about?

Are you searching for a following of 1,000 on Instagram, or a following of 10 real friends who actually mean something to you?

Are you searching for more “likes,” or real love?

There is a force greater than all others.

It's not an emotion that yanks your heartstrings leading to a rash decision.
It's not a movement of physics, scientifically and systematically pushing an object along a plane.
It's not a river slicing through a landscape or a glacier carving a canyon.
It's not mankind itself, razing and paving every hill in the name of progress.

The force of which I speak is not one of these individual things, because it is all of these things. The force of which I speak is the earth itself, from which all life springs and all hope is gained or lost. The force that graciously allows us to explore and alter her grounds.

The earth is timeless.

My perception of this planet is narrow. I am only able to know what has been preserved and passed down, or what I am able to see and learn through my own experience.

But the earth, she knows no bounds. I am but one speck of trillions on her surface, lingering long enough to create an inch of impact. Even all of the collective impacts of every person throughout human history is still but one minuscule piece in the billion-year puzzle of our universe.

The earth is formidable.

I can do a lot as one individual here on earth, at least within the sphere of influence I create. And as a society we've made grand attempts to tame the earth through invention and progress. On the surface we all look pretty darn tough.

But all that we’ve accomplished still pales in comparison to the preeminence of our world. We can cover the earth in cement, suck out every drop of oil, and burn every tree, and all we'll do is kill ourselves. This planet, severely altered or not, will live on despite our worst efforts.

The earth is awesome.

I know wonderful and caring people - artists and engineers, musicians and magicians, do-gooders and creators - all who help me and others to see life anew.

But to truly be awesome, one must actually create awe.

Never has anything awed me as much as the earth itself. No stately structure of glass and steel can ever match the natural nobility of the Yosemite Falls. No single loquacious character can speak with as much thunder as the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River. No feat of engineering or advancement can ever compete with the scientific wonder that is the indisputable  interconnectedness of every living and stationary thing on this planet.

Mankind has its moments. We’ve produced stirring speeches, mesmerizing melodies, and multitudes of individually important moments that change us as a society and change us individually. But when you step into nature and step out of your comfort zone, I guarantee you will see everything you thought was so big begin to look ever so small.

None of us, myself included, spend enough time in the natural world, but it's critically important that we do - that we take time out of our lives to feel the power as often as possible. Not just for personal gratification, but to realize that personal gratification is entirely insignificant. To understand that our goals and aspirations and moments are but one small part of a much larger, much more important scheme. And by doing so, help us to appreciate our goals and aspirations and moments that much more.

You start with a small plant, one other living thing. Easy, patient, and innocent. A simple piece of the natural earth.

You begin to see animals, domestic and wild. The dogs and cats, our chosen companions. The critters that live off our societal leftovers. The beasts that roam our mountains and backcountry. All a part of the vast network of life.

You peer deeper and find trees, big trees, the live oak and hardwood and redwood that are hundreds if not thousands of years old. That hold the land together with their deep roots. That provide the shade for our refuge. That provide the oxygen for life. That organically regulate themselves through a natural order of death and regeneration. That make us feel young, and small, and insignificant by comparison.

You look up to see the mountains that bend our landscape at their will. Untameable by our machinery and concrete. Incorruptible except from the most dastardly of our mining, fracking, and damming inventions. That provide a refuge for all animals,  wild and tame alike - tame animals like us.

And then, if you're lucky enough, you discover the gems that line the crown of our earth. Spaces not created through specific effort of man. Spaces that all living creatures call sacred. Sometimes we call them national parks, monuments, or forests.. .or sometimes we call them sanctuary, because their significance is refuge to our soul.

Sometimes we don’t take the time to notice them. Sometimes we believe we’re too busy. Sometimes we’re too numb to feel the power even when we do take the time. But when you pause in their presence and relinquish control, you realize you always knew them, they were always a part of you. When you open your mind to really see them, they inspire you to something bigger, greater, more.

In every level of of the natural, especially in those gems of earth, you feel the power. It's a power that's always all around us, but if it's the right moment and place, it becomes unavoidable. When you seek it out and visit its majesty, it's inescapably wonderful.

It’s the power that makes the world turn. 
It's the power that cannot be stopped.
It's the power that gets us out of our heads.
It’s the power that inspires us to do great things. 

It is the power.

I'll be honest...as much as I make an effort to bring a mindfulness practice into my daily life, there's one central tenet of it that I totally suck at: meditation. 

More often than not I have about 20 things on my mind. If I'm having a conversation with you, don't worry I'm totally listening, but I'm also multitasking - deciding on dinner, adding kale to my grocery list, thinking of a new blog post, remembering it's time to feed the dog, wondering what the weather will be like tomorrow - and oh yeah, back to the conversation. 

When I try to meditate it's hard for me to shut all that down. Of course, that's the point of meditation, to take some time out of our hectic lives to shut that all down, even if it's just for a few minutes.

I try to meditate, and I always struggle. 

In meditation you're not supposed to stress about the fact that all those thoughts have decided to interrupt your quiet time. Instead you observe them and watch them float by like passing clouds. It's kind of a fun exercise to think of them that way. But still, most of the time when I meditate it quickly becomes a full-on overcast, on-shore flow, gathering storm, kind of sky.

My solution to all this is BUDDHIFY. It's one of the few apps I've ever paid for, and it's worth way more than they charge. 

The app provides a series of short, guided meditations, that are tailored to fit in where ever you are and with whatever you're doing. It helps turn any moment into a mindfulness moment. Some of my favorites are the "Flight" meditation for air travel and the "Thanks" meditation to help me sleep. 

Meditation for me can be a challenging task, stopping everything in my mind to be totally quiet. This app helps me get there by using my thoughts as a guide rather than trying to stop them altogether. I can't recommend it enough.

(and no, they didn't pay me to say this)

There really is a lot of beauty in the world.  But there's also a lot of shit.

It seems like they both come at us in waves - we find ourselves in periods of beauty that make us feel sky high, only to be dragged back down to earth, landing in a pile of shit.

These ups and down are natural and inevitable, and I know that without the darkness we'd never, really, truly be able to appreciate the happy glow of the light.

But while we're there, in the beauty or the shit or some place in-between, we often struggle to see the big picture.

When we're in the shit it's so easy to feel overwhelmed and make rash decisions. We’re angry, emotional, and unsettled, so we forget that there is still beauty.

When we're in the beauty we too often take it for granted. We enjoy the moment, but tend to forget that our future will hold even more beautiful moments, or that the shit will inevitably return.

Lately, I've confronted an internal battle between the mindfulness of now and the big picture that can be so unknown. I appreciate the fact that it's best to stay present, to accept my emotions as they are and for whatever they are, instead of allowing them to overtake me. It's always best to live in the moment rather than constantly wonder and worry about the future.

But I also think there is some value in taking a broad look forward, and even backward, from time to time. 

Imagine you're fully within the shit. Difficult changes, bad decisions, work stress, struggling with people coming and going in your life. You might actually be somewhere in there right now so you don’t have to even imagine it. I'm there from time to time myself, we all are, more than most of us choose to admit.

Being present in that shit is a terrible place to be. As we try to mindfully accept and process our feelings rather than let them overtake us, that acceptance can make us feel even more shitty. Like it’s the new norm - this is it, learn to live with it.

On the other hand, imagine you're fully within the beauty. You're surrounded by good friends, smiling faces, beautiful vistas, and experiencing life altering inspirational events. You might actually be there right now so you don't even have to imagine it. I've been here a lot lately.

But even while we're there we don't always appreciate it. Acknowledging the fact that the shit is still out there and will inevitably return, doesn't have to take you out your moment of beauty, instead it gives you the gift of gratefulness. Acknowledging that there are more unimaginable moments of beauty yet to come in your life, encourages you to chase that beauty in all your decisions, to find your better life.

The idea of not being present in these types of moments actually gives me solace, and not in some escapist way. I look back at all the shit I've experienced in life and realize that this terrible thing, like all things, will eventually pass. I look back at all the beauty I've experienced and realize that this beautiful thing, like all things, will come around again. I look at the big picture - the entirety of both beauty and shit in my life - past, present, and future - and I feel grateful for having gone on the ride.

I realize this idea contradicts some of what I've said about being "present" on this blog, but I'm not one to stand still. Just as we move forward in life, through both beauty and shit, our mind and our heart and our spirit moves forward as well, learning from it all.

There's something wonderful about thinking of the big picture like this and using it to your advantage. It makes your present moment a bit more...chill.  

If it’s a beautiful moment, seeing the big picture helps you avoid that nostalgic melancholy feeling you get when it’s over. If it’s a shitty moment, the big picture makes your problems seem a little smaller, a little more manageable. From either position in life, the big picture helps you learn how to better appreciate both the beauty and the shit for what they are - just another one of the many moments that together make up you.

In this way, looking at the big picture rather than always shrinking everything down to the right now, is just another form of mindfulness. It helps you to accept and observe and process your emotions, instead of wallowing in them until they make you feel worse. 

Mindfulness isn't just about being present and leaving it at that, it's also about seeing the big picture and understanding that this present right here, it too shall pass. 

I want to blend both the mindfulness and the big picture together. In a way that helps me stay chill during the angry moments and feel appreciation during the amazing moments. In a way that helps me drop the things that hold me back like worry, doubt, and regret. In a way that helps me accept both the beauty and the shit. In a way that, in the end, makes me a better person.

Too Much Information in the world today.

Not just the overly detailed gross TMI stuff, that’s obvious. I’m talking about the oversharing, over-tracking, and over-dependence on information that has quickly becoming ingrained in our everyday lives.

Smartphones are an amazing tool for so many aspects of life, but they can also become a burden. Thousands of apps can constantly collect data about where you go and what you do, or provide you with 24/7 access to pretty much anything you think you need to know - money and maps, stocks and sports, drivers, deals, and dates. But at some point all that info becomes a distraction, another set of chores to take care of every day, leading us to obsess and stress.

Search apps put every answer at our fingertips, but they also discourage the simple act of remembering. Map apps position every street and turn so we never have to know how to get anywhere again. Messaging apps put everyone at our fingertips so never have to actually recall how to make a call. A phone number, an address, a birthday... we don't need to remember any of that. Our digital pocket assistant knows all, so why bother.

Fitness bracelets, Apple Watch, and health tracking apps may help some people get in shape, but they can also provide you with so much information that they become counterproductive - at least it did for me. They track our steps...or they track our lack of steps causing us to stress about the lack of steps. They track our sleep...or track our lack of sleep causing us to stress about sleep...leading to even less sleep.

Updates, alerts, vibrations, summaries, transfers, pings.

Constant access, constant info.
Too much access, waaay too much info.

What about being present? 
What about remembering instead of Googling? 
What about walking instead of tracking? 
What about talking instead of tapping?

What about using our brain in the here and now, instead of using our thumbs as an excuse to be everywhere else?