My week without a phone

I revisited my inner Luddite this week, although not necessarily by choice.

On Monday night I was looking at social media when my phone decided to reboot out of the blue. I thought it strange but after a few minutes of letting the phone sit there with its brand logo staring at me, I figured something was amiss – so I did the old pull out and replace the battery trick and got functionality back for maybe a minute before it rebooted again.

So after a little bit of searching on the internet I discovered what could be the problem and the suggested remedy, which I tried to no avail. The only other step would be a factory reset, which was distressing because I had hundreds of photos on there which weren’t backed up yet and I didn’t want to wipe the phone clean. I also found there were programs to possibly restore the files, if so for a not-so-nominal fee.

The next day I went on my lunch break to my local carrier, who gave me the bad news: in so many words, my phone is f’ed. And as a middle-class employed type whose money was a bit tight, a new phone would have to wait until payday today. So not only did I not have my primary means of communication for three days (we don’t use a land line) but I also lost my alarm clock, camera, and link to social media when I’m away from home. Thus, over the last few mornings I’ve woken up to my wife’s phone alarm, couldn’t take any photos, and have been a virtual stranger to social media. To be honest, though, the worst parts were not having the alarm clock and a way to text my spouse. And this experience revealed some key lessons.

First off, the weather this time of year doesn’t really change much from the night before, so checking it a couple-three times a day wasn’t necessary. And it’s easy to fall into the trap: you have a moment from work, and you check your social media. Without that, it seemed I was just a little more productive this week: got a small commercial kitchen project out and today I got most of the owner comments for a house taken care of, with maybe a couple hours’ work on Monday to go. (I have to raise the roof, which takes time.)

To me, it wasn’t quite a mini-vacation (since I still had social media available to me on my laptop at home) but it got me to thinking. We went out to eat twice over the week (three times if you count the snacks we had at small group at church on Wednesday) and because I was sans phone, I had to try and engage in actual conversation. Someplace awhile back I read a news item which made the claim that people are spending more time eating out: the average restaurant visit has expanded from a little over an hour to beyond an hour and a half. The culprit: people reading their social media as they sit at the eatery. This, in turn, cuts into business because tables turn over fewer times a night as five parties turn into four, but they’re not spending the time lingering over dessert.

(By the way, another drawback to not having a phone: at church I use a Bible app so I don’t carry a physical copy of the Good Book with me, It’s easier to go from, say, Romans to Leviticus on a phone in a few clicks than flipping through hundreds of pages.)

Anyway, if you were trying to get a hold of me this week I wasn’t ignoring you, I was just down incognito for a little bit. I got the new phone tonight, and I’m seeing how much of my stuff stuck to the Google cloud so tomorrow I should be somewhat good to go.

But the break wasn’t so bad either.

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