I lost my phone in November and went a month without, just because I didn’t have time or the inclination to get a new one. I happened to have an old flip phone around from a previous experiment so I reactivation it and now have been using a flip phone for two months. Very rarely (maybe once a month) I borrow R’s phone to help with directions to get somewhere new, but mostly I’ve been making it work.

Some reflections:

• I am really good at remember directions now. I can get to all of our basic driving directions no sweat and can look up the intersection of a new place and actually remember where it is
• I am much more able to be bored. I spend a lot of time sort of passively reading instead of passively on my phone, but also a fair amount of time doing nothing.
• It is really hard to stay in contact with more than 5 or so people. I can’t face time, group text, etc. Mostly I see people in person, call people, and have the energy to text only a few times a day because it takes forever.
• I miss the ability to listen to podcasts and audio and use my desktop a lot to listen to podcasts.
• You are completely boxed out of some things in life (like restaurants with only QR codes). I’m thinking about getting a printer to print timed tickets and similar items.

We have a new baby on the way and so I’m thinking about getting a new phone mostly to take video/audio but I don’t want to. I feel like smartphones totally corrupt my brain and I have no idea how to control myself around them.