The first 10 minutes

For the longest time, I thought I was starting my mornings normally. I would wake up, reach for my phone, check my messages, open Instagram , scroll through a few reels,reply to something, check another notification, and somehow ten minutes would disappear. Sometimes it was twenty. And I didn't even consider it a habit.

It was just what I did. My eyes had barely adjusted to the morning light, but I was already looking at someone else's life. Before I had even spoken to the people in my own house. I had already consumed hundreds of tiny places of information from strangers on the Internet. The strange part is that nobody was forcing me to do it.

There was no urgent message waiting. Nothing important bad happened overnight. I simply reached for the phone because my hand has learned what to do before my brain bad. And then, one morning, I didn't.
I woke up and, for some reason, left my phone where it was. I opened the window instead. The sunlight was already coming through. I could hear birds outside.

There was the usual morning noise from the house, and I could hear my parents talking
Nothing extraordinary was happening. That was the point. I sat there for a while and realized how much of my morning. I had been giving away without even noticing.

The sun had been rising everyday. The birds had been making noise every day. My parents hadbeen there every morning. And I had been missing all of it while staring at a screen.
What surprised me most wasn't that I had stopped using my phone. It was how quickly. I noticed the difference. The morning feltvslower. Not boring.

Just slower. I had space to think before the rest of the world started demanding my attention. I spoke to my parents. I listened to the sounds outside.

I watched the sunlight move across the room. And then I wondered why I had needed to consciously choose something that used to happen naturally. Maybe that's what technology does sometimes. It didn't necessarily steal hours from us dramatically.

It takes tiny pieces. Five minutes here. Ten min there. A quick before breakfast.
A scroll before sleeping. A notification. And because each individual moment seems insignificant. We don't notice what they add up to. That morning didn't magically change my life.
I didn't add become someone who wakes up at 5a.m.meditates for an hour. drinks green juice, and watches the sunrise while writing poetry. I still use my phone. I still scroll. I still waste time

But now I notice the choice. And sometimes I leave the phone alone. Not because phones are evil. Not because social media is destroying civilian.
But because there are things happening around me that don't come with notifications. The sunlight doesn't send an alert. Birds don't ask for likes. My parents don't appear on My screen with a "new message" notification.
They are simply there . And maybe some mornings, they deserve the first ten minutes of my attention. Not my phone.