Day 1: Life with No Phone

Today marks the first "official" day I've gone without a smartphone, or telephone, of any kind. 

Last night I finished converting all my pictures I had stored on my iPhone 14 Pro for the past 3 years or so to my Gmail. I literally emailed myself everything. So, thanks Google for being my free cloud space.

Today was somewhat uneventful, like most days. I haven't yet experienced any phantom buzzing as I've heard is common. Funnily enough, I experienced these phantom notifications / buzzes far more when I actually had my phone. Now, I haven't experienced any. It seems my brain has fully accepted my phone is gone.

I heard an interesting analogy the other day in regards to smartphones in our lives. The analogy went as imagining you are having dinner with your family and friends, and next to the dinner table is a wheel barrow full of cash, gold, rubies, endless information on every single topic you could ever imagine, naked pictures of all the beautiful people who have ever existed, and videos of every controversial and interesting thing to have happened in the past 20 years. Yeah, it would be pretty difficult to have dinner and not just go consume the wheel barrow in its entirety. 

Of course, in this analogy, the smart phone is that wheel barrow. But I think it goes deeper. The subconscious of our lives revolve around the smartphone; our brains KNOW that amazing wheel barrow is there literally anywhere we go. Even with discipline, we know the extent of its power. Our brain can never have a moment for itself as long as the smart phone is on our person. Any question we have is instantly answered, any thought instantly explained, any explanation immediately given. Any curiosity immediately trampled with the smartphone.

Today I was driving with my partner and we started talking about what an "allegory" is. I'm an English major, I'm fairly sure I used "allegory" correctly, but then again I wasn't sure. My partner wasn't here. "Let's Google it", I said before realizing I didn't have a phone to Google it. We just assumed we were right and kept talking. Now that I'm home, writing this, I just googled it. Turns out, I was kind of right, somewhat, depending... but I'm left with the question, does it really even matter? We both knew what I meant.

I feel we've all become incredibly intelligent thanks to the smartphone. At the same time, the brain rot in our society is real, it's present, it's there. I don't want to be one of those people anymore. I'm interested in how long I can keep this up, living life with no smart phone. But, as far as I'm concerned, this is Day 1 in the books of Life with No Phone.