I’m sick of my phone. Truly ill over it. It disgusts me. It is the source of my existential dread. I hate it in a new way. It’s not the old way that is sort of like “[nervous laugh] yea, I really need to use this damn thing less right?!?!” It’s different now.
You know when you start to hate your lover? Like, everything they do fills you with rage? The way they chew, their unique speech inflections, their clothing choices? It’s the stage where you know it’s only a matter of minutes before you break it off.
That is how I feel about my phone.
I hate the way it feels in my hand. The turned down position of my neck. The specific muscle contractions of my eyes. The scrolling motion of my thumb. It literally makes me sick nowadays. It makes it hard to breath. It makes me want to drop it and run away.
It’s not my phones fault. It’s not Apple’s fault. Honestly, the phone is a remarkable tool and it’s a unique privilege to have access to it. Us humans though, man, when you create a vacuum we just rush to fill it. It’s on us. It’s on me.
There is no fancy five step solution I am offering here. This is just an acknowledgement of the new way I feel about my phone. This disdain is fundamental.
I have found, though, that it disgusts me less when I am using it for a legitimate purpose like looking up directions, returning a text or making a call. Anything else and that dread starts to creep in.
Is it that I’ve reached a crux? Or is it that I am more aware of what is frivolous now?
I’ve done some things that have drastically reduced the dread (read: usage of my phone). I got a flip phone. Instead of using my smartphone all day, I use the flip. I check the smart phone in the morning and the evening so that I can return calls, texts and tinker a little bit on other apps.
However, I am not always so disciplined so I found this app called Flora. In a sentence, you can program it so that if you navigate away from the app during a predetermined interval of time, you have to pay actual money to a tree-growing foundation. If you reach the end of the interval of time, you don’t have to pay and you are rewarded with a cute little virtual tree. I am a big fan of this app.
Anyway, that’s all. Thought I’d share. Maybe more later.