December 2021 I woke up this morning in a beautiful house overlooking the cold winter sea. My glowing wife asleep next to me, with our baby growing away inside her. My 4 year old daughter and my 2 year old son stumble into our bedroom, dazed and half asleep – a daily occurrence every morning at 6 a.m. sharp. The 4 year old clambers over me, all elbows and knees, and nestles between myself and my wife. My son does the same, this time using his head and my crotch, as his makeshift ladder onto the bed. A kiss and a squeeze for both of them makes me feel warmer than the duvet ever could. The pride I feel right now. Being a great dad who loves them, cares for them and devotes every second of my being to them. Directly or indirectly, everything that I now do is for them. I will break the chains of my parents and I will love every second.

These strongest of emotions, albeit so raw and pure, are soon pushed back into my psyche. Drowned out like the noise of a speeding train over a mockingbird’s lullaby. I now have the overwhelming need to reach over my son and grab my smart phone.

The grip on my children and my wife loosens and now the reality of worldwide news and horrors of man and nature grip me. I lift my knee, as to hide my dirty phone from my children’s eyes, knowing that what I am doing is unforgivingly wrong. Worldwide pandemic, government overreach, corruption and tyranny, bloody ideological terrorism, dirty political theatre, local murders, rapes and robberies. I am doomscrolling at 6.30a.m and I can’t stop.

A realization has come over me like I have never felt before. My eyes open, my mind opens. I am an addict. I am addicted to my smart phone. It grips me so tightly that anything and everything else comes second. My wife, my children, my business, my friends, myself, we are all an afterthought. My smart phone comes first.

I looked around today and its normal, everybody is doing it. Teenagers at the bus stop, parents walking to school with children staring blankly at a screen. Their neck crooked down, lifeless, joyless.

Am I on the right track? Are we all on the right track? What direction are we all headed? It feels to me that we are being coerced to a place that isn’t natural or positive. We are heading to a place, not out of choice, but out of addiction.

This is not who I am. I am not a follower. I am out.