Please don't remove your menu!
A shout-out to restaurants: keep your analogue menus!
I refused to go to this new restaurant that opened in town.
Why?
Because I was supposed to download an app to order and pay with it.
Hell no! No way I will go somewhere for dinner, where they force us to stare at tiny screens to order and pay. And wait for the notification to pick up our food ourselves.
I mean seriously, where did we take the wrong turn?
Can’t we just have a normal dinner experience, with a great waiter, kind, caring, where you get the food delivered and are happy to give a generous tip for an awesome human-to-human service?
It happened so, that I finally went to this restaurant, because my boyfriend back then loved it. Is still refused to get the app.
And as I suspected: I disliked this whole system. Nope, you can’t convince me with efficiency, at the loss for human connection & a special evening.
Recently I went to another place for brunch, with my friends and their kids. We were also told to order via an QR code, but the food would be brought to us.
We asked for the menus, because I knew they had them. The waiter seemed confused why we wanted them, when we had the code & our phones.
And honestly, it was not because of the kids, it was us end-thirties that wanted to look at the menus!
I love to hold a simple A4 page, where everything is clearly visible & I do not need to scroll and pinch my eyes to read what to get.
We also did not kept staring at our phones instead of talking, being ready to answer messages and zone out the second this piece of technology beeped.
We ate, talked, interacted with the kids, exchanged thoughts, stories. It was lovely!
One topic we discussed was this technology-obsession everywhere.
I mean, it is almost scary to see people sunk into their phones, while being with others.
People staring at screens while walking in beautiful nature.
It goes further: almost everyone carries their phone in their pockets, close to their bodies, constantly spreading radiation and EMFs.
I am a fan of technology to a certain extend, especially because it connects me to my family which is spread over three countries!
I can talk with my 91 year old grandma in Poland and she sees my face & I see hers, its amazing!
We can have family group calls whenever we want, share vacation snippets, sing birthday songs and participate in each others lives.
But the constant addiction of sticking to our phones is terrible.
Luckily I think that paying attention to small situations and being aware about our phone consumption can make a big difference!
That is why I hope restaurants wont ever get rid of their analogue menues: they are awesome and beautiful & give us the possibility to touch something in the real world, instead of engaging with it through our phone screens.
What I try to do in my every-day life to not get lost in the online world, are those tiny things:
I never check my phone when I am in company. I want to give the other person my undivided attention. And maybe that sounds extreme, but I feel that it is extreme to NOT pay attention to the person I am with. They decided to spend some of their lifetime with me, so I want to honor that!
(tip for the less extreme: check your phone when you go to the loo ;) )
I keep my phone on silent mode from 8pm till 6am, including a greyscale and red-light screen. I do not want to burn my eyes with artificial light & mess up my circadian rhythm if I don't have to.
Flight-mode during the night, so I am not exposed to more EMF than needed. I sleep so much better!
I also never carry it close to my body, I do not want my bodies electromagnetic field to be messed up by my phones field. Yes, we are highly electromagnetic beings, our hearts more than our brains even!
This is why I also do not hold my phone close to my ear. Always on speaker phone in front of me. No need to blast my brain with more EMF than necessary.
Big no-go for wireless headphones, in my case, no headphones or earplugs at all. Same reason as stated before. For the less extreme: use cable earplugs or headphones, they are messing up your fiend less.
I sometimes scroll, I admit that, but I try to not look at mainstream media, manipulative things and terrible & fear-mongering news. Because if I do, they affect me and especially in the evening, I will carry it into my dreams: not worthy! I would rather that my soul explores other realms instead of the messed up news-system we have on earth.
I am out in nature as much as possible, it is a perfect balance to the tech-world we are exposed to and grounds us into ourselves even more!
Do you have another thing you do, to avoid technology smog & addition? Let me know, I would love to try it out!
One of the biggest shifts that I noticed in my relationship with technology is, that I started making much more analog things!
Be it painting and crafting, planting plants, exposing myself to nature as much as possible, at all times of the year, reading, writing, I cook myself, I shop local as often as possible and try to be connected to where I am located strongly.
A friend of mine recently send me a great initiative, The Offline Cafe, started by three guys last year in the Netherlands, where they organize offline-phone-free events.
I love the idea a lot and my head is already spinning on how I could incorporate that idea into my life and what I want to contribute to the community I am part of…
This is my most recent idea that came up and it is still brewing, so no idea what will come from it, until then, I keep on painting, crafting, sharing with people and looking at aaaallll the restaurant menus there are :D
Love,
Daria
P.S.: As I love to draw and paint, feel free to let me know if you want to learn it & we can meet up bi-weekly to draw together when you become a paid subscriber!