Let me start of by saying, I love my phone. My phone means a lot to me. You could say that we have a very deep connection and being apart from it for longer than an hour causes me serious separation anxiety. I couldn't even imagine 24 hours without my phone let a lone a whole freaking week. Before you start to judge me, I know that basically all of you feel the same way about your phone whether you want to admit it or not so just accept it.
So to start off, all week I kept finding myself reaching for my phone that wasn't there. I realized just how dependant I really am on that thing. I know that I use my phone a lot and that I am quite attached to it but I didn't quite realize quite how many little things I rely on it for.
The first thing I noticed was that I never knew what time it was. I don't wear a watch so I mainly rely on my phone to tell me the time. This was a big struggle for me when trying to get to class on time since I never really knew what time it actually was. Basically, the whole week I had no perception of time and it really threw me off balance.
I walk to class every day and some of my classes are a nice 30 minute walk from my apartment so I rely heavily on my music to keep me entertained. Walking with music is one thousand times better than walking without it. I didn't even realize how uncomfortable I felt walking to class without it, it was very strange. I am always, always listening to music it brightens my day and my phone is what plays the soundtrack of my life. Living a week of silence is not something I care to do again.
If you follow me on Twitter you probably now that I like to tweet on occasion, or basically all the time. I would think of something I wanted to tweet but I would have no way of tweeting it and by the time I got to my computer I would have forgotten it. Twitter brings me great joy so not being able to tweet or read peoples tweets 24/7 was a really sad experience for me.
Also, I don't know about you but I can be very forgetful sometimes and because of this I am always making lists of things in the notes app on my phone so nothing ever slips my mind. Without this I had a hard time doing basic things. When I went grocery shopping that week I had no idea what I needed and forgot everything that was semi important to buy, needless to say that trip to the store was a complete waste.
Since I live on my own without a car I rely heavily on the bus to get around and I rely so much on my phone to search up what time and where the bus is coming. Without it I was so lost. I can barely figure out when and where the bus is coming with my phone and without it I was completely in the dark. Saturday night my friend (her phone was stolen the same night as mine) and I decided to go to the movies. We used our laptops to find the bus that would take us there but we didn't check what time the bus would take us home. We assumed that the same bus would take us home, but little did we know that that bus stopped running after 8pm. After the movie we waited at the bus stop for a solid 15 minutes until we we realized it probably wasn't coming, that's when we reached for our phones to call a cab only to realize that they weren't there. We were stranded with no way back home. Did I mention it was snowing and we were freezing to death? Thankfully someone let us borrow their phone to call a cab, but if no one else was around we could have been in serious trouble.
Every morning I wake up and check the weather app on my phone before I get dressed for the day. Since I couldn't do this I had no idea what the temperature would be like and there were a few days that week were I definitely should have worn my winter jacket instead of my fall one. I also got caught in the rain a few times without an umbrella or rain jacket, which is always super fun.
I mean it wasn't all bad I guess. I was a lot more productive when studying and doing assignments as my main distraction was no longer there. I also found myself paying a lot more attention in lecture. Not having my phone did help me in the academics department at least.
Lastly, I want to talk about communication. This is the most obvious one, but I felt so disconnected from everyone all week. Since I live away from home, my cellphone is the only way I contact my family. Thankfully, using Google Hangouts I could call them using my computer, (I know technology is crazy) but if my parents wanted to reach me all week there was no way they could. Also, if my friends wanted to reach me it was pretty difficult especially because most of them had no idea that I lost my phone. So sorry if you texted me and I didn't reply. This leads me to my next point. I had serious FOMO. I felt like I was missing out on all these texts, but realistically no one was probably texting me anyways.
Honestly, at the beginning of the week I thought having my phone stolen was the end of the world, I mean it sucked a lot especially because my phone was only 3 months old and now I have to pay to replace it, but the world didn't end, it kept on spinning and I survived.
To the people who read this and think "this blog post is basically just a typical privileged millennial crying about how lost they are without their technology and complaining about dumb irrelevant things when there are more important issues going on in the world that should be discussed" I agree with you, you are one hundred percent correct and I even half apologize you read this but at the same time hey this is my blog you're on what do you expect?
Until next time,
Alisse
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