It's funny how the thing you think you control sometimes ends up controlling you. Every time my phone buzzes I automatically reach for it, thinking I've got a text, an email, a tweet. Even if I'm in the middle of something, it still niggles away at the back of my mind until I check it.
The original meaning of the word 'worry' carries this idea. Worry was always a transitive verb, where an agitator (a sheepdog, say) worries at a something (some sheep).
Because we're quite self-centered little sheepies, over the years of being barked at and hounded by our worries, we've shifted the focus of the verb 'to worry' from the subject (the sheepdog) to the object (us).
That's how I feel whenever my phone buzzes or my email pings or I get a brown envelope through the post: worried.
I should clarify a few things before you imagine I'm about to start a new life as Hermit the Technophobe. I don't mind receiving tweets, mail, chat messages, snapchats or smoke-signals. Don't stop talking to me altogether because you think I'm busy railing against the modern world from my cave in the rocks. No. I just think I'd like to receive messages in my own time, rather than be continually distracted by buzzing, pinging, bleeping, attention-seeking noises that turn out to be not worth being worried by. It's so distracting - I could do with being a bit more focused.
So, push notifications will be turned off while I return to the stone age and get on with some work. Don't panic if I don't get back to you straightaway. I won't be worried about it.
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