Wellies and wheels
1970’s with my sister. No internet, no devices, 100% fun.
I was born in 1970. My childhood was filled with climbing trees, building snowmen (yes, it regularly snowed in the UK back then), riding my skateboard and my first racing bike (my father and his father both worked at Raleigh bicycles in Nottingham before deindustrialisation). Pre internet, pre mobile phones - life seemed to happen in this ‘super 8mm’ denim-jeaned, long haired way, I have the photos to prove it!
We played board games, got into fist fights (over my stolen skateboard, by the way) and generally roamed free in the neighbourhood, left to our own devices (no pun intended).
At school, I was sporty, the class clown, a bit of a trouble maker and happy. I loved being a kid in the 70’s, American pop culture was making its way into our homes via TV’s, The Million Dollar Man starring Lee Majors being one of my favourite shows at the time. The stuntman Evel Knievel was a huge attraction for me and led to many a failed attempt at all too dangerous home-made ramp jumps in the local woods, luckily no teeth lost this time, but always a few cuts and bruises.
By secondary school, I was a pretty successful swimmer, BMX racer and runner, smashing a 20 year old record in the 400m at my local school. I was also reading Plato, Aristotle, Kant and Kierkegaard, writing undergraduate papers at the age of 15. I even got the opportunity to read philosophy at Oxbridge by the age of 16. I had true focus in my life.
Fast forward forty plus years with 26 of them in the media industry, a father of 5, traveling all over the world and living out of a suitcase. I was glued to my phone, the constant scroll of social media and the ping of emails, WhatsApp and sms’s drip feeding my greedy dopamine receptor.
In short, I decided something had to change, I uninstalled all social media from my mobile (believe me, I’d love a ‘dumb phone’ one day…), leaving only podcasts as my ‘non-work’ activity.
Rich Roll’s podcast had been on my mind for some time, I’d watched a few episodes on YouTube and was committed to listen to / watch a lot more. Rich is quite honesty a modern day super hero. Corporate lawyer to alcoholic to plant based, ultra race guru, he and his wife Julie are quite literally saving lives - go check them out and check out his book Finding Ultra.
One of Rich’s interviews was with best selling author and journalist Johann Hari. His book ‘Stolen Focus - Why You Can’t Pay Attention and How to Focus Deeply Again’ is life changing. You can listen to the full interview between Rich and Johann here: Rich&Johann.
Why am I talking about this now? For her 5th birthday, my wife and I bought our daughter a piano. She has always been drawn to them, to music, to dance, thanks to my wife who is an amazing dancer and opera singer, unlike her cardboard cut-out of a dancer husband. When I saw how our daughter was focussing on playing the Major and Minor scales with her piano teacher at home, it reminded me so much of those days back in the 70’s. We have never allowed our daughter anything but minimal TV screen time. No tablet, no phone access. I’m truly proud of that.
I have 4 older kids, aged 28, 26, 21 and 19. The older two also grew up pre-big bang internet. Email was rolling out and most homes had a home pc, but generally speaking their lives consisted of the same stuff I was up to as a kid… sword fights, climbing trees, using tools. Real tools.
The 21 and 19 year old grew up right in the middle of big-bang internet. One of the biggest regrets I have is of buying them iPads at the age of 9/10 ish… Their attention suffered, our relationships and closeness got chipped away at and the access to that ‘outside world’ opened gateways to content young brains are not ready for. I was completely to blame, tech ruled and software, apps and the internet were literally nirvana to me…
I, we, all of us need to regain our focus. Deep thinking, understanding, photography!!!
I hope you found some of this useful, I hope you see parallels in your lives and I dearly wish you the best in regaining control over your time, interruption free, device limited, living… Living!
Here’s to some analogue photography and a lot less time online.
Thanks for reading,
Richard.