overzealous

It’s funny. I’ve never been one for TV dinners and during my childhood eating was always a family affair. But recently both Christina and I found ourselves bringing our laptops to the dinner table.

It happened organically without any conscious decisions being made, and as such initially went unnoticed and unchecked. Perhaps because we are both interested in our jobs and both work (too) hard. Perhaps because we’re both permanently attached to the internet (we cook a lot from the most amazing smitten kitchen, so it actually makes sense to have a laptop around as we’re preparing dinner).

Either way what was initially just catching up on blogs or a quick way to convert between metric & Christina’s funny Canadian units quickly became a real problem. We stopped talking. I kept working. If I was coding, I’d barely notice what I eating, who I was eating with or what they were saying.

This all happened a few months ago, and after a bit of a chat we figured what had changed and fixed what was becoming a problem for us without any drama. Tonight however I had my laptop out at the table whilst cooking – watching the winter olympics in the kitchen as Christina wasn’t back from rowing yet. But as soon as she arrived home I automatically closed the lid and we started talking. For some reason it reminded me of what things had been like, and how much happier we both are now.

It still bemuses me how easily we got sucked into something which, when written down, seems so obviously dysfunctional. Yet another example of technology and modern society taking over.

Speaking of which, I’m currently lying on my bed typing into my laptop, reading about grails, checking out my IRC and gmail and listening to music streamed from my media server downstairs – whilst my girlfriend sleeps next to me. Time to kill the technology!