This past weekend I roasted coffee for the first time in a few months. Nothing too fancy but notable because it was the first thing I’ve done since the launch of Periscope that seemed potentially worthwhile to share with the world.
While I’m futzing with my iPhone trying to get things setup, my Daughter comes over to me and asks to help. So rather than sharing my morning roast with the world I decide to share it with her instead. Lovely, right.
Once I get the roaster going and we enter into the more boring part of roasting coffee where you wait for First Crack, she asks if I want to play chalk on the sidewalk next to where the roaster is going. I say yes, but only half heartedly. I’m still stuck on how good it was for me to put my iPhone down and be in the moment with my Daughter rather than focusing on sharing it with the faceless masses online.
The trouble is…I’d already pulled out my iPhone to tweet about the experience and how important it is to still ‘be in the moment’ in the face of things like real-time video sharing. I finish my draft, look up, and see my Daughter already drawing with chalk without me.
Yeah.
So it turns out I hadn’t even come close to learning my own lesson.
I struggle with the degree to which I feel compelled to share my life online. The reinforcement you get from posting something is genuinely addictive. Thankfully, in this instance I caught myself before it was too, too late and put my iPhone down to played until we heard the coffee start to pop. But nevertheless I thought the experience was rather telling.