Kicking my phone addiction
And freeing up my hand to hold a mickey
We’ll spend twenty years of our lives on our phones. That’s according to an expert who wants us all to feel terrible about ourselves. Some of you might be thinking, “But watching people try on clothes from Zara is exactly how I want to spend my life” and I agree that is a noble existence.
But me, I want more. So I’ve been examining my phone usage and asking hard questions like:
“Could the two years I spent shopping for sandals that I never bought have gone to better use?” (Perhaps).
“Did I need to spend six months watching Chris Hemsworth lifting weights?” (Yes).
An outsider looking in might say that I love my phone more than my family and that same outsider might be correct.
I gaze at it more often than I do my children’s faces and I hold it for longer than I hold Southside Dublin Dad’s mickey. I mean who wants to hold one of those for four hours a day? Maybe you?
I’ve heard that to cut back on using your phone that you should make it as difficult as possible to get to it. One recommendation is to wrap elastic bands around it so you’ve to make the effort of unwrapping it which might put you off. This won’t be enough for me, I can bite through an elastic band in seconds.
Instead, I’m going to wean myself off the hard way. I’ll put the phone in another room, locked inside a safe for which only my husband knows the combination. Then, I’ll get myself onto one of those Hannibal Lecter chairs and wait and see what happens when I hear a faint notification ping coming from the next room.
My guess is I’ll be like a wolf smelling raw meat. There’ll be snarls and growls as I try to wrestle out of my straight jacket. Through sweats and tears, I’ll threaten my husband if he doesn’t give me the combination and scream, “What if I’ve missed the date of the bake sale?” “What if Chris is on Insta doing bicep curls?” “What if it’s a reminder to put the bins out?”
But once I get over the cold turkey, I’ll be ready to live a phone-free life with time for worthwhile things like watching TV, drinking and occasionally holding a mickey.
