reception reliance

welcome to introspection ft. harsehaj! ⭐️ i’m harsehaj, an 18 y/o always up to something in social good x tech.

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btw, feel free to reply with topic ideas you want me to write about for future posts.

onto today’s topic: reception reliance📱 

over the past 4 days, i’ve been exploring the serengeti and ngorongoro’s crater in africa. we saw lions, elephants and giraffes among dozens of others animals in the wild, and reignited a childlike wonder i thought i lost when wild kratts stopped streaming on the tv.

but, that’s besides the point of this blog post — i’ll reflect on my amazing safari experience soon. this one is an explanation as to why i didn’t write any posts in the last 4 days. 😬 even while i was on kilimanjaro, my posts were still being sent out each day because i wrote them beforehand and scheduled them out.

i planned to do the same for the safari until i was told that we would have reception at our camps. i thought, “amazing, i can reflect more timely with the safari and end off each day with that note.”

well, my reception was straight garbage. 😭 i had absolutely 0 reception on my phone during the whole safari, and i was stressed the entire first day by the fact that i didn’t send out this post. even at elevations of 15,000 feet high up on kilimanjaro, we had moments with reception so i could check notifications and update my family if i really needed to.

here, i had nothing and it was a really uncomfortable feeling. i also had the jarring realization that i have an unhealthy reliance on digital connection to the world through cellular data and wifi. i still used my phone to take (a lot) of photos, but the unsent blog posts and inability to text my family were forming a pit in my stomach.

i didn’t want to spoil my safari experience over this blog, as much of a priprity as it is, because at that point there wasn’t really anything i could do. no point dwelling over it until i can actually fix it, right? 🤷 once i finally stopped checking my reception status every 5 seconds, my experience improved exponentially.

it was actually really nice to disconnect and take in the world around me as well as the company i’m sharing these memories with. instead of letting my notifications run free reign at me throughout this trip, i’m turning off my data for all of my apps except for when i need to write or text loved ones. (:

my reception reliance will be broken. 💪

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