Ones and Zeros From Afar

I have a guest post for this week’s Sinful Sunday, from this man. I love this little homage to how brilliant technology can be. I’m certainly enjoying what technology is offering he and I, and it’s enabled him to influence one or two of my previous photos, but this is the first post written by him. I’ve had this photo for a couple of weeks and was always planning to use it this weekend but when I earmarked it for today I hadn’t realised it was also her birthday weekend, so welcome to Exposing 40 and happy birthday! Xx

Ones and Zeros From Afar

Technology is amazing. Technology allows us to stay in touch and communicate with people across the globe in unique and different ways. Utilizing technology to say I’m thinking about you and appreciate you is where things get tricky. The very access and convenience that technology provides can at the same time emphasize the disconnect between two people in two different places. A free moment for one person may for the other be a frantically busy day. So what do we do? Instead of bothering those we love and care about, we fire off texts that accentuate the bullet point nature of our lives.

This is the situation my wife and I found ourselves in a little while back. She had back to back conferences and was out of town for a week. On my end, this meant being solo-dad to my two girls; managing work, school, extracurricular activities, and making sure we all ate too! After about day three or four it was clear that my wife and I just weren’t connecting.  The phone calls and texts made clear that we were operating on different planes of existence. Even when we both had a down moment, her excitement to catch up was met with my desire to lay in bed and mumble incoherently.

Ever the astute one, my wife realized that words were not going to improve the situation. The next afternoon, she excused herself from her conference, took the elevator to her room, undressed, took a picture, and sent in off to my phone. No words, no emojis, just her sending a sequence of ones and zeros from afar to say I love you.