June 2, 2014

iPhone or Bust

In December I took a hard look at some things in life I could start to cut out. Think of it as a Life Cleanse if you will. One of the items in my life that I felt was suffocating my mental focus, my wallet, and my ability to think was my iPhone. I justified having it as a way to “connect” to family and friends that I don’t have close by. Facebook was there to guide me with daily hourly updates, Instagram to feed my addiction to what I couldn’t see on Facebook, and Candy Crush to kill whatever time I had in waiting in a line or during a commercial break. In all reality I was losing any ability to connect with the real things going on around me in my life.

I realized it was a problem when my husband was begging me to “put the phone down”. Too many times we spent our evenings next to each other on the couch with me looking down at my phone to try and “feel” apart of everyone’s lives. Connecting without any REAL connections.

I decided after speaking to {G} that I would cancel my iPhone and order an old school … non-smart phone.

Enter the Basic Ace-ic

2529 2530

I bought it on e-bay for $20 bucks and dropped my phone bill from $80.00 a month to $40.00.

Lets just say this lasted until June 1st. Yes… I BUSTED.

The idea was great… the reality not so much.

Instead of dis-connecting I ended up using my work iPhone to feed my bad habits instead. I’m not a usual text heavy person… really… I only sent and recieved 121 text last month. Not a texter but if I thought group messages were annoying prior on the iPhone… I was in for a major headache with this phone. It broke up all the group messages into separate messages. FML. Not only was that annoying but some picture messages would come through and others wouldn’t.

Taking photos became an issue. I would carry my work iphone and my basic because if anyone wanted to reach me I would need my regular phone… however if I wanted to capture a moment I was left with a camera from 2006 and would need the capabilities that the iphone had with me. Yikes.

I realized on Sunday that I could still cut back on this tech addiction without having to lose the tech benefits. Here’s what I learned in my 6 months of disconnecting from a smart phone.

  1. Unplug yourself. By putting my phone in another room I was able to connect to those around me. At first it will feel like you’ve lost a limb but over time you will be happy that you are connecting to the people around you instead of those on social media that don’t need you the most.
  2. Get rid of the Apps that trigger your addiction patterns. Good Bye Candy Crush. Seriously, I could’ve read 10 books that feed my sole instead of the endless amount of time and frustration I spent trying to get to the next level that WILL NEVER END.
  3. Look Up. Why are we wasting time reading about what others are doing? We should be embracing life and add to the quality of what we want out of it.
  4. Technology can make life easier at times. Checking voicemail has never been such a damn task. *86…. ring ring ring… please enter your pass code… final a message. Thank you smart phones for making this a lot less hectic. Sounds ridiculous but going back to those steps was a pain. Even after 6 months I would forget.. is it *86 or *68 or *48. FAIL.

After two days back on my iphone I felt a weight lift off. It’s silly to say that but sometimes I think it is too hard to go back in time. Have you heard Miranda Lambert’s newest single, “Automatic”? She is speaking to this exact topic. Wasn’t life so much simpler when everything wasn’t so automatic.

Yes, Miranda it was.. until I bought that iPhone.

2 comments:

  1. Ya know, A for effort! That's a huge step to try a different phone. I'm still working on putting it down. I do try to leave it in our bedroom when I'm home so I get away from it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Becky! I should give myself a little pat on the back, 6 months was a fairly good run.

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