Mobile Love

You must have seen those videos which tell you that if you are online how you do not have real friends. Now I have a grouse to pick up with such videos. I exhibit huge mobile love and by extension social media love. It has only increased after Nokia gifted me a Lumia 1020. I will concede in the beginning that excess of everything is bad. So if you are addicted to social media and cannot stay away from it to the extent of harming other spheres of your life, you obviously have a problem. But other than that is social media such a bad thing?

Consider my case. I started blogging in June 2005, yes you read it right it has been 9 long years. Then I blogged 5 times in a month. I now blog much more than that in a week! Twitter was not even born in 2005. I have a full time job, I have a lovely daughter, a husband who bears up with all my traveling, two nephews, one niece, a lovely sister, a super brother-in-law, in general a large and supportive family. I have managed to keep them all connected with me in spite of managing a blog, twitter, FB, and Instagram actively. I am not alone, I am not lonely at all.

In June 2005 if I told someone that I had a travel blog, they would immediately say, “so who reads it?” Thankfully those days are over, I hope forever. In fact some of the same people have started blogging now.  Because of my blog I did 19 trips last year. This year it has been 10 so far and the 11th trip starts in a few hours. My blogging took me to places I was not even dreaming off. If you look at my blog title I said ‘Travel tales from India.’ I was not even thinking of foreign travel as I am quite reluctant to part with my salary. It is not that I had not been abroad before, my trip was an academic conference in 1999 to Singapore.

But then I started getting invitations hotels in India and foreign tourism boards. I have started going places! All because I started a blog and stuck to it for 9 long years. For me social media has been a boon, it has been a blessing. So, don’t tag me in those videos that show a person who is lonely because of using social media. It is not social media as such but how we use it. There is nothing wrong with Mobile Love. And if you would listen to me, you too should not take those videos seriously because I know you can balance your life, you know how to close all tabs and well, look at the TV! I am just kidding, take, go gardening, whatever!