Jaya Nicely

What’s the first thing you do when you wake up? Read the news? Check your emails? Scroll through social media? Duh, no. I tend to give my balls a scratch, fart and then go for a gypsy's kiss. I fed up with being “smart snubbed”, i.e., ignored by a friend or relative too engrossed in their smartphone or tablet. I just wish my company had not given me a mobile phone back in the day. As I go on hols, it gets put in a cupboard and at the end of the hols it's probably still there. I find it show more extremely rude when you're spending time with someone and having a deep meaningful conversation and suddenly they whip out the phone and start clicking away and these little 'text breaks' then start happening every 2 minutes or so making the conversation a frustrating stop start.

Once after a Benfica’s football match I went to a pub with 3 people and I decided to get the first round, while I was getting the drinks I was thinking about all the banter we would have about the match we just watched (we had won 5-1, two red cards and manager sent off). Got back to the table and I'm not kidding... all three of them were sitting silently playing with their phones and barely noticed me putting the drinks on the table. I felt like a spare prick at a wedding quietly drinking my pint with these zombies and I looked around at other tables and it was shocking how quiet it was and how many were tapping away at their phones. Smart snubbing is a serious social problem!

Maybe the reason that many people spend so much time online is that their "real life" isn't that interesting? Most people are pretty dull. They only talk about their job (or school), what they have done, where they are going on holiday, their problems, what's on their mind. It isn't exactly a stimulating conversation! TV is an even worse way of wasting your life. Tedious game shows, soaps that are little more than petty criminals arguing all the time, celebrities who are more decorative than interesting and "factual" programming that is mostly watching a presenter traveling somewhere for an "expert" to tell them something.

Add to that, that the media's sensationalising of danger, terror, hazards, risks and the unknown has made people too scared to go outside and do things for themselves (and even more scared of letting their children out) - and there aren't many other things to do. Except to sit in a dimly lit room sending meaningless messages to complete strangers that you call "friends" and posting daft messages in comments sections.

But we should stop pathologising everything. Your phone isn't an addiction. You aren't overworked. You have plenty time to do things. You have a lot of options. You don't have OCD. You aren't on the spectrum. You don't have any food intolerance. You're just a boring ape like me who wants to get better at drawing and sketching like I'm doing right now!

Some of my daily journals here:

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