Cold. Alone. Disconnected.
That’s how I felt when I first lost my iPhone 4. It seemed to me as if the world were collapsing around me and the apocalypse had arrived, just about five months after the ancient Mayans predicted it would, and I asked myself, “How am I going to survive?” Fire rained from the sky and chaos reigned as I thought about life without this seemingly essential device.
But, miraculously, four weeks after that catastrophe, I’m still alive.
For nearly a month, I lived like it was 1995, and the only things I was really missing from my brief ‘90s regression were Lisa Frank stickers, a scrunchie in my hair and a Furby by my side. So after all of the initial panic and anxiety I went through, you can only imagine my, and probably your, shock, when I realized that losing my phone was actually a partially positive experience. Of course, I can look at this story in such an optimistic light only because it ended with a happy reunion, but don’t get me wrong, I still missed my $450 phone. It’s just that life without a phone was surprisingly liberating.
For one, I was forced to quit playing Candy Crush cold turkey, and although I’ll admit that sometimes my fingers still twitch at the thought of connecting three jelly beans in a row, I’ve been clean for four weeks. More importantly, though, I learned to function without my trusty mobile device. The iPhone made my life easier and more convenient, but if the hole in my heart I developed when I lost it is any indication, I was much too dependent on it.
During my phoneless days, I never once had a life-or-death moment; the only thing I actually missed was my Hello Kitty case. Instead, the lack of incessant buzzing, ringing or flashing whenever I received a text or call was refreshing, and truthfully, it gave me a legitimate excuse to ignore obnoxious people’s attempts at conversation. I couldn’t spend hours poring over Grumpy Cat memes or watching episodes of X-Files on my phone anymore, and all of a sudden, magically, I became productive, and my daily pile of homework disappeared before midnight, an unprecedented feat in my high school career.
Technology is great, but sometimes, it just gets in the way of life. Try shutting off your laptop or setting your phone aside and look beyond the digital world for a while because in all seriousness, losing my phone showed me how much time I was wasting swiping and tapping my phone screen. I know it’s hard, but take some friendly advice from a reformed iPhone addict–put the phone away and you’ll see that you’ll have so much more time to climb mountains, run a few miles or even just finish up some math homework.