Over 30 Days Without a SmartPhone – How’s it Been, REALLY?

The reaction people have when I tell them I don’t have a smart phone continues to amuse me. On more than one occasion my little flip phone has been referred to as a dumb phone.  My good friend J. was there once and responded, “No, it’s not a dumb phone, it’s a phone.”

I like that.  It’s not dumb, it’s just a phone. It does what it’s supposed to do with very few additions. It can still take photos, though they’re pretty bad. It still receives and sends text messages. I can even update my FaceBook status if I really want to.

Okay, that’s all fine and good, but how has it been going really?  Have I been suffering withdrawl? Have I plummeted into a deep dark depression without the ability to look into the lives of my friends and favorite celebrities every nanosecond of every single day?  Have my fingers grown stiff and paralyzed without their constant flicking across endless apps and time sucking games?

No.  No.   Oh, and no.

Have I missed my smartphone?  Sometimes, but very rarely.  In fact, the first time I genuinely missed it was this past weekend at the Outside Lands Festival.  I was surrounded by people staring at their phones.  They were checking in, they were looking at the schedules on the nifty Outside Lands schedule, they were looking at the map, they were snapping photos on Instagram, they were tweeting about the bands.  They were doing the things I used to love to do on my smartphone all while filling those empty spaces between bands.

And then, of all people, Tom Morello, said something early on Sunday morning that really resonated with me.  In fact, it was something that was very similar to something I’d recently said to another friend in regard to my habit of lugging my camera around with me everywhere.  He said, “Be in the moment.  Put that shit (cameras, etc) down, and be in the moment.”  Another artist said it later in the day, it seemed to become a theme – the way you start thinking about something and then suddenly it’s everywhere.

Be In The Moment.

Isn’t that really what the point of my “unplugging” and living a less wired life is all about at the root of it?  I wanted to stop giving only some of my attention to things all the time. I wanted to stop devoting only part of myself to things.  I wanted to give things all of my focus. I wanted to Be In The Moment.

I wanted to go out to dinner with my friend without the urge to  pull out my phone every two minutes.  I wanted to relax at the beach without the need to check out FaceBook and see what everyone else was doing.  I didn’t really need to read all my celebrity tweets while enjoying a weekend BBQ with friends.

As an aside, at what point did it ever become acceptable to have your phone on the table during a social occasion?  At what point did society say, “Yes, it’s totally okay for you to be interacting with someone or ten other someones during this dinner date we made last week?”  When did it become okay for someone to start typing away on their telephone while their companion was mid-sentence?

Oh, that’s right. Never. And yet, apparently, everyone seems to think it’s okay.

Don’t get me wrong here, I haven’t forgotten. I, too, was one of the worst offenders.  I have never claimed to be anything other than one of the worst offenders.  It was a driving force behind giving up my smartphone.  Because I became so disgusted with myself and this poor behavior.  What’s strange is, now that I’ve made the change in my own life, I’m much more tolerant and forgiving of everyone else. Tap away, society.  Do as you will. I can wait for you to finish whatever is so important on your phone for us to finish our real life interaction.  It’s all good.

I am happy to be free.

I can’t lie to you, however, because I said I would be honest.  There are things I miss.  Giving up my smartphone has all but destroyed my twitter account. I’m not sure I’ve logged in more than twice this month.  Instagram is gone now, too.  I miss seeing my friends’ photos more than I miss posting my own, for I can always bring an actual camera places with me, but many of the people I followed there are people who wouldn’t normally take photos.  I miss checking in places, odd as that may be. It was fun looking for the place and checking in with excitement, “Old 97s! — at the Fillmore, San Francisco” and I’m certain next week when I’m sitting at the airport I’ll miss having the phone to waste away the time with, for it was an excellent time waster.  But really?  That’s about it as far as the negatives go.

I have to say, I’m pretty surprised.  I truly believed after a month, I’d be running back with my tail between my legs just begging for an iPhone 4.

In with the Old, out with the New

Were you to ask some of my friends, particularly those who I consider some of my closest of friends, they might tell you I’m a closet “hippie,” a “tree-hugger,” definitely one of those liberal minded people.  I haven’t taken things so far as becoming vegan or ceasing my use of deoderant or even purchasing a hybrid car, but I do hug my Christmas tree.  I recycle, but I could do more. I find little ways here and there to try and reduce my carbon footprint or better the Earth, but I could do more. I switched to using sugar cane paper at home, I stopped buying bottled water and other drinks, I have been switching out all the regular bulbs to the CFLs as the regular ones burn out, I pay my bills online and requested companies stop sending me paper statements/bills, I stopped most junk mail (until I moved then – yikes!), and so on and so forth. The fact is I do more than some people, but I still do much, MUCH less than others.

When it comes to cell phones, I am much the way I am when it comes to the environment. I could be worse, but I could be a lot better.

I was always a little resistant to the cell phone idea.  I didn’t even get one until the mid to late 2000s. Then the iPhone hit and I was horrified at the way everyone was suddenly addicted to their phones. If someone forgot their phone it was as though they had left their right leg at home or their best friend had died. If the battery was dying OH MY GOD!  It was terrible and gross and getting worse and worse and worse.

In 2010, I tried out my friend’s iPhone while on a trip to Seattle. In that moment, a monster was created. I purchased a smart phone shortly upon our return and thus joined the ranks of smart phone junkies. Everything was at the tip of my fingers. Twitter! MyFitnessPal! Facebook!  Gooooooogle…. Oh my!  As a google addict, well, now I was in for some trouble.

And trouble it was. I quickly became the person I had been secretly rolling my eyes at in my mind. Family functions saw me flicking through my apps.  Nights out with friends were photographed and posted for posterity.  (Drunken nights out with friends were hastily erased the next morning).  I was sending messages through Facebook while driving, Tweeting from meetings, there was the AngryBirds craze, then WordsWithFriends and DrawSomething shortly thereafter, I played Suduko every night before bed, and don’t even get me started on how quick my draw was when it came time to google something. I had answers and I HAD THEM NOW!

I spent last week camping in beautiful Yosemite, California.  While there, I spent a lot of my time thinking about my life and the strange disconnect between the way I have been living and the way I feel like I want to be living. The two are not entirely different from one another, but they are not at all the same, either.  I already wrote, here in this blog, about my goals to live a less wired life.  I wrote about ditching the cell phone entirely now that I have a land line. Further reflection proved it was just too big a step for me, particularly as I do need a phone for work purposes during the busy season.

So what then?  What could I do to help turn the life I am living to the life I want to live?  What could I do to take away some of the constant influx of information and technology and interruption from my day to day life?

Being due for my new-in-two upgrade, yesterday I took a trip to my local cell phone provider store.  And walked out with this:

Yes, it’s true. I have reverted back to a flip phone. Gone are the apps, the games, the internet.  No more handy directions when I am lost (good thing I still have a GPS), no more instant gratification of google, no more world wide web.  I think the feature I will miss the most will be the syncing to my google calendar, but I can work around that.  I worked around it for years.

Gone is the temptation to “check in” everywhere I go. I don’t need to give a detailed play by play of every  moment of my life. I don’t need to get a detailed play by play of every moment of your lives. I may have to plan things a little better, but there’s something to be said for spending a little more time, putting in a tiny bit more care and effort in to things.  I’m no longer locked into a contract with any cell phone provider (as I worked through a loophole there) and, should I decide this was a completely crazy move, I can still use my new-in-two deal to purchase myself a smartphone at a deeply discounted price.

People at work have reacted as though I grew a second head straight out of my neck. One in particular thought I downgraded due only for financial reasons and couldn’t understand  when I told him it really had nothing at all to do with finances. I had no problem affording my $90someodd payment every month, though, yes, cutting that in half will be nice.  It wasn’t about money.  None of it is.  It’s about quality. It’s about living a life I want to live, even if it may not jive with what people think is “normal.”

So maybe I’ll take the $500 I’ll save and treat myself to another week of camping under some incredible stars somewhere.  That’s a glow I’d much rather spend time staring at.

In with the new old and out with the old new.