Life without a cell phone
more than a tech nerd entrepreneur
One of the most centered months of my life was October 2011. During that time I decided to go without a cell phone and do Bikram hot yoga for 30 days. Just powered it off and started to enjoy the moment. If I needed to make calls I used Google Voice. I planned out my meetings and computer time in order to give 100% to the tasks at hand with no distractions and make plenty of time for play. When I was out, I focused on the people with me rather than a glaring mobile screen. It made my experiences more rich.
One thing I looked forward to when powering the phone back on was the novel of text messages I expected to receive. Feeling love from my friends who would have sprinkled digital words to my phone throughout the month.
I only missed 2 things while not having a mobile device; Snapping sneaker photos to instantly upload to my photo blog SneaksAttack and Pandora. Other than that, I loved it. I felt and was in complete control of my time. I felt patient, positive, rested and optimistic.
At the end of the month I flew to Vegas to go to a Foster the People concert with my girlfriend Holly at the Cosmopolitan. Before leaving to the airport I decided to take the phone powered off with me just in case she couldn’t find me when landing. I shouldn’t have. I didn’t even remember where I had stored it and it was 10 minutes before finding it in my drawer tucked away in a dark corner. My zen present state was about to die with ingenuine random connectivity and distraction.
I didn’t need the cell at the airport, but we couldn’t find each other at the concert and that’s when my finger pushed the trigger. This little machine that fits in my pocket overtook my body like ‘Body Snatchers’ except rather than mindlessness all I heard was mental chatter. I instanteously felt panicked by all its commotion, could no longer enjoy the music and instead spent my time starring at its screen… And those texts I was so excited to receive never came because sadly I discovered cell phone services only store texts for a couple days and if undelivered they get lost off into the abyss forever.
Hiding my phone rather than powering it off just isn’t the same. I feel its magnets clawed into my mind and skin. It’s strange. You may think I am overreacting, but you experience the wonderland living without it for 30 days and then turn on the noise and tell me how you feel.
The real question is, why has it been almost 2 years since I have gone a month without a phone. Why do we make choices we know don’t make us as fulfilled as we can be? #humanproblems right? I leave my phone at home a bunch now, but rarely off. Usually it’s on silent and I go back and forth between having notifications on or off, phases of being nervous I’ll miss out on something. Maybe this life journey is meant to have all sorts of different storylines and there is no one way to live, but a sampling of many different ways and at some point, when we’re ready, we combine all the stuff that was best together. Maybe that’s why people feel more at peace the older they get….I don’t know.
All I do know is… I rather be smiling than worrying about my cell phone.
Post inspired by my friend @aaronboerger
