At the beginning of this week my phone broke. I was staying at my boyfriends house and when I woke up and realized I had forgotten to plug it in before I went to bed so it only had 2%. Instead of getting out of bed to plug it in, I got distracted and checked Instagram instead (my normal morning routine). Naturally my phone died, so when I got home the first thing I did was plug it in. I remember having to go to the bathroom really bad, but plugging my phone in took top priority. Looking back I find it humorous that I am so dependent on my phone. I needed to plug it in first so that it could turn on quicker and I could have my distraction back quicker. I didn’t get to finish checking all my social medias before it died, so I was feeling out of the loop. My phone ended up being stuck on the white about to turn on screen for two hours, refusing to turn on completely. It was like a tease, looking like it was so close to turning back on, but knowing it never was. My phone was toast. I was also right in the middle of sorority recruitment, so I literally had no free time to run to best buy to use my warranty to get a new phone. That and I haven’t minded being phoneless, so I wasn’t making the biggest effort to go figure it out. I have been phoneless for a week now and I think that after I finish this post it will be time to finally head to best buy and join society again.
This past week has been extremely difficult to communicate with people, but it has been really nice as well. The sad part was I was more upset that I would be losing the fire emojis on snapchat than actually not having a way to get ahold of people for simple, daily questions. Thinking about it now, that is one of the biggest first-world problems I’ve ever heard and I should re-evaluate my priorities. Now that my main distraction was not at my finger tips anymore, it felt nice not to rely on it. However, when it came time to do homework, I would find myself looking for a distraction because getting distracted has become a habit I just do without thinking about. I’ve realized that my attention span has become quite short because of how often I give into distractions. I would find myself with two assignments in front of me and every 30 minutes or so I would think to myself “wow I’ve been at this for a while, what can I go to take my mind off this for two minutes?” I would then play with my cat, run random scenarios through my head, read articles online that I normally would scroll right past, and I even allowed a bug on the wall to distract me. I actually sat there and watched it for a few minutes before I told myself I needed to put the bug outside and get back to focusing. I was literally looking for things to distract me, its like I was going though phone withdrawals.
Luckily, as the week continued, my desire for having such frequent distractions faded. I still do look for distractions, just not at the rate that I did the day after my phone broke. I think when I go get my phone I want to try and not be so dependent on it. A life without distractions always at my fingertips has been peaceful, more productive, and my attention span has increased significantly.
I totally know how you feel, this week for my Journalism class I had to go without my screens (phone, laptop, etc.) for 48 hours. Overall, I didn’t really mind, but I totally understand when you say that you felt really out of touch. It was weird not relying on texting as a way to contact people.