You Deserve A (Digital) Break Today

We've trained ourselves, it often feels, that we need to be on all the time. On Twitter. On Facebook. On Google Plus. Holding our smartphones in case of a text. We walk down the street and see something that strikes us as funny, we snap a photo and post it to Instagram.What happens if we just put our phones down for a while, and step away? Don't answer that text right away. Don't respond immediately on Facebook. Don't answer that Tweet before you have time to finish reading it.When we respond so quickly, we forget to stop and think. So many of our misunderstandings, so many of our unintentional insults come from the need to respond right away.I've been trying, lately, to spend a little less time online. To spend more time in the moment with my family. To recognize that very little needs to be checked right away - most things really can wait a few minutes, a few hours. (Sure, sure, if you're a brand or a company or a business, we tell you all the time you MUST be online all the time. The rules are different for individuals.)I respect people when I see that they're not spending their entire lives online. I'm sort of relieved when the great rush of Twitter and Facebook posts slows for a holiday. It means people are recognizing there are more things to life than their digital lives.I love my online life. I have a great many friends I've met on Twitter or Tumblr; or I've reconnected to because of LinkedIn or Facebook. But they have lives, too. We all need to step away from the computer now and again and live that "real" life.If you didn't make it to the bottom of this post, I take no offense. I just hope it was because you decided to go offline.