Unplugged

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go about 10 days without my cellphone. And by “opportunity”, I mean it spontaneously stopped working on me and as I was in the last week of my contract at my job in Saskatchewan, I did not really have much opportunity to get it fixed right away. Here are some of my findings from the experience.

First, while I’ve always recognized how much time I wasted on social media, but I was always hesitant to delete it. Ultimately, I suppose you could consider it a form of FOMO. While I always ended up getting sucked down a rabbit hole of nothingness, I feared that I would miss out on life updates of friends and family who I do not talk to on a regular basis, but would still like to be in the know when things happens. Losing my phone made me realize how much free time I actually had, and how trivial some of these things are.

Something I noticed was that I always reached for my phone when I had the ability to do so. In the morning before getting out of bed, at night before getting in bed, while eating meals, waiting for my coworkers to run into the office to grab something, etc. If I wasn’t doing something, I wanted to look at my phone. Losing this ability gave me a lot of “where am I, what am I doing” opportunities.

Another thing I realized was how ultimately unnecessary my personal phone actually was. As I had my workphone on me (which I could essentially use to make calls and that was about it. So really, it basically served as a portable landline) I was able to contact my parents and let them know about what happened, and I was able to use my computer for everything else. While I did not have the convenience of being able to see emails or school updates as they came in, I could still monitor them several times a day with my computer. I still had the tools to survive my day-to-day professional and educational careers, and all I lost was a bit of convenience. Although, after I handed in my workphone, the drive home was probably one of the scariest drives I’ve ever done. I guess I’m lucky to be living in the age where I’ve always had a cellphone at the same time I’ve had a drivers licence.

Ultimately, I believe it was good for me. Once I got my phone replaced, I did not redownload my social medias. Life without it has been remarkably peaceful, I dare say. It has brought me much more down to earth, and has given me dozens of little opportunities to work on Kung Fu or school or other mandatory tasks that I previously had not even recognized.