Dumb Phone Detox – Week 1 – Wyatts Hobby Photos

I’ve rewritten this post several times. I wanted to come into this with some grand observation or an end-all-be-all life lesson. The truth is, seven days isn’t enough time to come to a conclusion on anything.

Some hard truths I’ve had to accept:

I didn’t fall off the face of the earth, and no one gives a shit about my social media presence.
I miss the machine. I miss all the things I know I hate and that aren’t good for me. I had this misconception that I’d immediately rebuke my bad behavior and abhor all that made me feel like a mindless zombie—but the truth is, I miss the noise.

I’m certainly no saint—I spent several hours online on Sunday from my desktop computer, browsing Reddit and a couple of socials.

BUT… I also organized our pantry from hell, ran a load of dishes, physically wrote words down in a journal like a “My Password Journal Girl Tech girl” of yesteryear, edited and organized photos from the weekend, and blog-posted about them, and cooked three at-home meals.

I felt compelled to DO. I think that was the point of all this anyway…

What comes after?

I keep getting the question, “What’s the end goal?” To be totally honest, the speed at which I made this decision has me feeling like a pilot flying at 30,000 ft who was licensed through Microsoft Flight Simulator ’98. (BTW, did anyone else’s parents actually own a flight joystick with one of their first computers, or was that just me?)

I don’t know what happens at the end of this 30-day experiment. I don’t know if I can realistically get on in the world without having a smartphone—something as simple as a vacation I have to fly to seems like an impossible task.

Also though—the very fact that I feel almost forced into having one is the very thing that makes me fearful.

At the very least, in the seven days I’ve spent phone-less, I feel like I can see back to that not-so-distant past where we didn’t live in an on-call world—where we were all a little inconvenienced all the time. It’s like that tinge of nostalgia you get when you charge your iPod up for the first time and hear that 2012 summer playlist you cooked up for your camping trips and your late night car rides, and your anthem comes screaming back at you like you could have it all again.

Am I overly optimistic about this experiment right now, Or is it just nostalgia for a world that doesn’t exist anymore?

Because it feels like it could be real.
It feels like my 2012 iPod playlist.

Wyatt H.