I Heart My iPhone

Greetings. I am back from the "undead." Which is translation for, I have felt like a total zombie for months and am finally starting to reenter the land of the living. I hope!

I feel as though I have missed so much these last few months as I have adjusted to the routine of waking early, traveling all over the state for trials, coming home to take care of my baby and our house, and then settling down for a long winter's nap before I do it all again. Rinse, lather, repeat. But now I think I have gotten the hang of it, at least to the largest degree possible, so I am going to make a valiant effort to reclaim some time and space in my life for things I enjoy, this blog being near the top of that list.

To that end, today I am pausing to reflect on and enjoy a moment of gratitude for my iPhone.

Photo from www.forbes.com/sites/johngaudiosi

I know that sounds silly. I've written before about my slight addiction to this phone, which has only worsened since I got the iPhone5. Yes, I've written about how the very technology that can improve our lives can also steal our attention from our family, friends, and even our kids ..... and the other things in real time which we could be doing. I am always mindful of that and I still try to make sure that my phone doesn't have that much power.

However, sometimes it can be a good distraction. Like when you're driving through remote parts of the state bored out of your mind, trying to stay awake until you reach your next, not-so-exciting destination. Now I travel so much that I am tired much of the time and so it takes all my energy and concentration just to stay awake for the trip and to make sure that I am safely operating my vehicle.

Is it nap time yet?

Today, however, I'm driving in the middle of the day rather than before sunrise, and it is sunny and the road is clear and I am actually, mercifully, awake. Still, as my thoughts started wandering to all sorts of things, I thought about how much I miss writing and how much I miss with blog ever since the demands of my job have made it hard to take the time to focus on it.

I realize that that's just life, but that doesn't mean I have to be happy about it. While work is important, of course, this blog is important to me too. It is an important way that I am able to connect with people even when I can't see them, and even when time and distance separate us. It is also an important creative outlet for me, whether it is to vent or to express a new idea, or to ask for other people's ideas. The blog became a big part of my life when I started it, and I have definitely found that I miss it a lot, especially lately.

So, as I was driving to yet another remote destination today, I looked at my phone to turn off my music and then I realized something..... it hit me that I have a dictation app. That means that I could - gasp! - dictate my blog posts if I wanted to. What a revolutionary concept!

As is the case for many people, dictation is unnatural to me. At my very first attorney job out of law school, my employer practically had to force me to dictate letters because I was so used to doing everything for myself. Part of the composing and editing process for me is typing out my ideas and seeing them in front of me, and then figuring out what it is I want to say as I am typing it.

But once I started doing it, I quickly realized how efficient it was. Once I got over the weirdness of saying punctuation out loud, I found that it actually improved my productivity a lot. So why couldn't the same be true for this blog?

Well, here I am, dictating this post instead of writing it. This is the first post I've ever done this way. Of course, I will have to read it back and edit it more, but I am super excited that I came up with this idea, because not only is this making this trip go by much faster - and making it far more bearable - but it also just might be help might help me get back into the blogging groove sooner than I thought I would be able to. And that's awesome.

Doing this also makes me realize that this extensive driving I am doing does not have to be a complete waste of time. Sometimes it is important for me to just relax and zone out and listen to music to either get energized for what I have to do that day or to relax after I have done it.

But this way, I won't lose my connection to my readers and I also won't lose my thoughts. There have been so many times I've been driving and have had an interesting thought for the blog and failed to say it and save it into my phone, or write it down, and then it has been lost forever. In fact, I'm quite sure I lost the life-changing viral post I've been meaning to write that way. Ha ha.

Anyway, I have no idea how this will turn out but I thought it was worth a try. I hope that you will see more posts from My Life With Pie in the coming days and weeks because I know I will continue to explore the nether regions of my state on a regular basis. Hopefully my thoughts won't be too random or scattered or sleepy to make any sense. But there's only one way to find out!

Yay, we're back!