Digital Dave: A former digital junkie

A site by a former digital junkie.

Digital Dave is a product of the ’80s, with an affinity for all things technical! In the past, he divided a great deal of his time between gaming, social media, and the daily requirements of emails and paying bills.

“Although I became proficient across a wide array of platforms and digital tasks, I found I kept losing more time and felt increasingly overwhelmed. Then in my 20’s and 30’s, my relationships also began to suffer.”

Dave built on his technical skillset from an electronics background in Middle and High School, adding to it with Collegiate courses in engineering and programming, military, and law enforcement service.

“The older and better trained I became, the more aware I was of the heavy toll excessive digital behaviors play in our lives. When you never reach the end of your email inbox, social media feed, and your device crashes putting your data at risk, the burden can feel almost overwhelming!”

So how does all that experience translate into this Digital Dejunking website?

“I realized one day that the digital toll had grown too great. Screen time had translated into two college degrees, a promising career, and a stable home; but it also led to children who stopped asking me to play “catch” or “dolls”, and a spouse who couldn’t rely on me to fulfill all my responsibilities reliably.

I can think of few things so crushing as realizing you waited too long to start a thing with your kids, and that the spark isn’t there anymore. You try to fan it now that you have time, but everything has changed.”

Realizing the degree of digital dysfunction and the toll it was taking on his family, Dave resolved to dejunk his digital life so he could reprioritize what mattered most to him.

“When you’re staring at those screens, the things you are doing feel so important. So critical. The marketing and the media and our social feeds demand to be addressed NOW with notifications constantly dinging our phones, ads everywhere we look, and workplace digital tasks that follow us home to our beds at night. When was the last time you considered putting that digital junk on a diet, setting down the device, muting the notifications, and really reconnecting with those people around you? When was your last time alone with your thoughts? How would you like to feel it again?”

Dave pursued a new approach in his daily digital behaviors. He put the digitizing on a schedule. Established boundaries and limits to reduce intrusions into family time. And he relearned that essential skill where we say, “No” to the unnecessary so that we can enjoy the present and the possible.

The blog posts of Digital Dejunking examine some of the key lessons Dave learned, some of the tools that make digital dejunking easier and more practical, and resources to protect our digital identities – those irreplaceable bits of ourselves already shared so far beyond our control.

Please enter your email below so you can benefit from these crucial lessons and benefit from the changes Dave made, learn from his mistakes, and share in his triumphs! Along the way, you can also practice these digital dejunking best-practices, and thrive as you TAKE BACK YOUR TIME, and TAKE BACK YOUR SPACE!

Best Wishes! – the Digital Dejunking Team