Dude, Where’s Your Phone?

The last two weeks have been a little crazy for me, in between trying to deal with the impending dooms-deadline-day that is next Thursday, to a family emergency, it’s been really rough. Coming back to my dorm room after an intense week to find that the heat had been cranked up enough to replicate Dante’s Inferno, to my wall of pictures threatening to come undone, the breakdown of my clock, and mountain of readings left to do, has left me a little rattled. So naturally, it didn’t help with my blackberry reached its inevitable doom. I say inevitable because of the many uncushioned blows it has experienced in its lifetime after a set of, er mishaps. Of course, this was all I needed mid week to feel like the universe was punishing me. Once the denial phase was over, I realized the universe was trying to send me a twisted message about focusing. Except really the only thing I wasn’t being sent was a constant flurry of emails, bbms and texts, ushering me in from denial to anger. There had to be some good that came out of this right? Within a few hours I’ve learned two key lessons in the days I’ve been left without my Smartphone. I’m not completely cut off from the world! Luckily, I won’t have to worry about emails or hearing about what civilization is up to thanks to my lovely laptop.  It kind of makes up for everything I would do on my phone, while allowing for more control over how I divvy up my time. Considering how much my phone and I affected our dynamic, John Graham seems to be especially pleased about my current level of focus. I would use my phone to a) get out of awkward situations b) distract myself when I didn’t need to, like when I really shouldn’t have been. In other words, it was kind of a not so great “out” I’d give myself a lot. Being phoneless forces you to focus when you really need to focus, while also allowing for communication when it’s needed, especially the face-to-face kind. I realize that it shouldn’t have taken until my phone was gone for me to have fully understood how attached I was to the blinking red light that previously ruled my life.Considering how much I whine about my workload, it shouldn’t have been attached at all. Undergoing this smartphone fast –while not intentional- has given serious perspective of how moments spent on it essentially takes up a huge chunk of my day. Needless to say, my agenda has never been happier with me. -Vahini