Digital distractions.

My digital devices distracts me and they help me. My devices anoyes me and they bloody excites me. They keep my awake and somehow away from my creativity and they make me so sleepy and yet, they help me built new skills and new areas to be creative.

This all sounds like a total mess.

On this iPad, I have an app that gives me a daily creative kick. It is called Oflow and I am fair to say that I like it.

I do not use it every day though, even I have set some notification to trigger me every day at a certain time. But when I do, I always open it with excitement to see what it has for me today.

Today it said that I should:

“Grab a timer and set it for a few minutes. Then disconnect the Internet, turn off your phone, and get away from any digital distractions that could prevent you from working.“

But my digital devices are making me work. And most of my work are on digital devices. But maybe that is the problem. But do I see it this way? At the moment, that is.

I would like to find my way back to painting and drawing again, old school like, not digital. I do less of that now than I've ever done previously in my long life, but, I do more writing. Digital writing that is. I. This way my digital devices are helping me, quite a lot I have to say.

If I were to write all this in old school ways, I would never have made it. I am too slow and have too many complexes about my handwriting, my spelling and my grammar.

Yes - or no - I am not a native English speaker or writer and before I came to Hong Kong to work at an international school where the language of instruction is English -with my English mother tongue wife - I lived and worked in Germany, which BTW isn't my mother tongue either.

In Germany I hardly wrote anything. There my complexes about writing, spelling and especially the grammar made my efforts crumble. I just had so much anxieties of writing anything in the German language.

Speaking it was another ballgame. I wasn't completely correct and did make many mistakes with the gazillions of grammatical rules and irregularities in that language, however, when you speak it, it seems easier to cover your mistakes and camouflage it as a foreign charming accent or style.

Maybe if I'd had the technology I have now - back then - could have helped me with these problems because that is exactly what they do now, when I write in English, and my devices are helping me with spelling and some grammar. I think it would have.

That is not now and now is where my focus is, now.

My focus is on writing. I want to develop and become a good writer. And to do that. I believe my devices helps me by making it accessible and joyful to do. Not only for the devices ability to help me with spelling and grammar, but also by offering a platform to publish it. And to archive it so I in fact can follow the development of my own writing.

Seen like this I think my devices has helped me grow.

The distraction lies in the fact that everything is so easily accessible and I can jump from one website with crap or gold in a matter of seconds. I must say I can get stuck in Twitter. However, again I see that as development because I always learn something new on Twitter, and I spent more time reading random exciting stuff and then gets caught up by another link or account.

And these things clearly distracts me from painting and drawing in the old school way. I have started to do some digital art using some painting and drawing app, but not enough.

So if I one day decide to do like the “Oflow” app told me to do today, I need to get out all of my big pieces of paper and maybe the unfinished work from when I had my last painting period, 8 years ago.

Shocking. Distracted by technology.

When I think about it, then it might be true that my devices keeps me away from getting my hands dirty with paint and brushes.

Ok, tomorrow I will follow todays "Oflow" tip.