After I check my email for messages from family and friends, newsletters on various forms of writing, proper grammar and character study, I check my email again.  The send/receive button is clicked like a drum beat and I text away on a cell phone’s miniature keyboard.  Should the time come when I have to slide into my compact car, the GPS is turned on before I leave the garage – even if I’m driving to the grocery store up the street.

Technology on a day-to-day basis as a Millennial means a routine of activity.  We are constantly living in the rapid-paced present without knowing so, for we are always focused on the future, on the next big thing.  When does the new iPhone come out?  When will Facebook upgrade to a different format?  When will my wireless router be faster?  Despite a conventional belief that this viewpoint is detrimental to savoring life, the truth is quite the opposite.

Though my sustenance may occasionally be focused on the sensitivity of a touch screen, I’m concentrating on intangible success, in the form of efficiency, in romance and in happiness.  And that is what being up to date can help with, the contribution to happiness.  It’s not about cutting corners, but rather shape shifting to an evolving society.  To be held back in the modern world means missing out on opportunities to improve your life.  Nothing wows Millennials anymore.  Nothing knocks us on our knees in humility to a technological advancement.  It’s possible to be impressed with implanted microchips and virtual reality, but we’re just not going to be in shock from innovation.

To older generations, the sight of an original room-filling computer must’ve been like a crowd beholding the first circus.  They were observing alien creatures, never seen outside picture books or imagined beyond stories.  A mystical white tiger leaping through fire, or a chimpanzee collecting nickels in the stands was something out of a dream, inspiring awe.

No computer could do this to a Millennial.  Even the most revolutionary improvement is like witnessing something as simple as a mutt dragging its owner down a city sidewalk, lifting its leg against an imprisoned tree.  It’s all customary.

Now, I video chat with other gamers from England; I network with long lost friends; I use satellite-based maps to navigate perplexing roads.  And I digitize my existence with an awareness that translates, ultimately, to progress.