Two steps forward, two steps back

I suppose that it’s time for me to confess something to you, dear reader. My posting day for these entries is on Sunday. You probably know that already; after all, when you are reading this, it is Sunday. But I write this throughout my week, edit it on Saturday and make sure it's cleaned up by Sunday. I only make mention of this because what I’m about to tell you may make no sense without context, which I’ll now provide. Here goes.

I failed.

Yep, that’s it. There’s the big revelation. You remember when I said last post that at some point, I planned on failing? I wrote that post on the Thursday before I edited it and subsequently posted it on Sunday. And, then it happened. Saturday and Sunday, my two days off from my regularly scheduled 9 to 5, I found myself helplessly scrolling through my Reddit feed on my phone. I spent an hour or two in this endeavor both days. This… turned consistent throughout the week.

But really, in practice, modern life makes it so we’re almost meant to fail this endeavor from it’s start. When I was going through my phone so that I could effectively dumb it down, I realized that there were so many apps that I have that I need in order to function in day-to-day life. My thermostat for my heat and air conditioning? Controlled from my phone. Sure, I could just go down the cellar steps and change it from there, but the installers put it in a rather inconvenient place that requires me to go over two pipes and duck under some low-hanging wire.  My work email? Accessed through an authenticator app on my phone. My time clock app for work? On my phone. Those are just very small examples of the larger problem that I can’t quite escape.

The real question comes down to what I can do to mitigate the problem. Realistically, I can’t get rid of my smartphone, too much of ‘modern’ life depends on it. So, for me, the real solution comes into the little-used button on the side of my phone. I have found, though I have not always been successful this week in doing so, that by simply turning my phone off, it triggers a switch in my mind that it is not available. If it’s not easy to just pick it up, turn on the screen and doomscroll my way to a panic attack, for my mind it takes it out of the equation. My friends that will only communicate through texts and Discord can wait until I choose to be available again.

In addition, by keeping my phone off at night I’ve felt better rested come morning. This isn’t by some miracle or an accident. According to an article from the Cleveland Clinic, that nightly doomscroll keeps your mind engaged, makes you feel alert because of the blue light, and can put you at a higher risk of coming across content that can really set your emotions on high alert. For me, my worst habit has been checking the poll numbers for the election relentlessly at night. I minored in political science, what can I say? But, by turning my phone off and refusing to doomscroll once I hit the sack, I’ve fallen asleep a lot faster and I can wake up at the time I want to, roughly about 5 a.m. Goodbye, existential dread, hello working out to Richard Simmons every day!

Here’s the final problem you may come across. You’ve turned your phone off, you’ve set it aside, you suddenly have a lot of time that’s no longer occupied by the relentless doom scrolling- what do you do with that free time? For me, dear reader, I connect with my roommate. I play video games either on the Wii or the NES emulator I have. I read. I catch up on my favorite shows. Your nights without your phone might look different to mine, and that’s okay. But find what works for you, and then run with it.

Until next time, dear reader.

The Beginning

There once was a time when smartphones were not the norm. Hard to believe, I know. But I was born in 1995, I grew up in the 2000s, and I don’t recall a ‘smart phone’ being a thing until maybe around 2009. My first two phones were flip phones. The Motorola Razr? That was my jam in middle school. Sure, I had to leave it in the front office during the day, but I felt cool.

I liked the Motorola Razr. It was so convenient, so new, so innovative, so… anyway. I’m getting off topic. The point of my writing this for your consumption dear reader is not to tell you how wonderful that “dumb phone”, or as I called it, “phone”, was.

Now, I find myself staring down the barrel of thirty. Throughout my twenties, I had a smart phone. It saw me through high school (remember when we were all playing Angry Birds and that god-awful Flappy Bird game?), and it carried me through college. But you know what I noticed, especially while starting my mornings at 5 a.m. and going straight through to 9:00 p.m. between work and school? My depression skyrocketed.

I thought, maybe it’s because I’m pushing myself too hard. Maybe I’m doing too much. Maybe, after graduation, everything will magically be better, and I’ll be able to be the happy person I once was circa-2009. Somewhere in my brain, I thought that once I entered the real adult world, I would finally be happy.

Nope. When I graduated, no longer was I that happy, doe-eyed, fresh-faced kid. I was instead a marginally depressed adult, living in a new city with a wonderful roommate, realizing that my communications degree wasn’t opening the doors I thought it was, settling into a corporate job and future and wondering why, after doing all the theoretical steps to be a happy, successful person, I still… wasn’t. This remained largely the same throughout my twenties. I could go into several reasons as to why, but honestly it starts sounding like a bad Lifetime movie that comes on at 3:00 in the morning right before the commercials proclaiming something is like scrubby bubbles for your intestine.

Then, it dawned on me. Maybe, just maybe, this box of instant gratification that I've been holding in my hand for the past decade has been making my mental health decline more than it normally would. And before you write me off as a grumpy old man shaking his fists and yelling at the kids to get off of his lawn, I'm not the only one who seems to think so. According to a study by Columbia University, the constant notifications can create a sense of urgency and FOMO (fear of missing out), leading to increased anxiety and stress.

So, this past week I launched an experiment. I sat down, sorted through my apps on my smartphone and determined which ones I needed and which ones I didn’t. I determined that my smartphone was going to be a tool, not my go-to instant gratification. Essentially, I dumbed down my smartphone. I even took it a step further. I have a basket set in my living room that when I get home, my phone goes into. I even put a couple of random magazines that started showing up to my house in there so that if I’m tempted to grab my phone when nature shows its ugly side, I have something else to grab and read. Essentially, I decided to make my life a cross between 1985 and 2006, and as I sat on the floor of my bedroom playing Super Mario Brothers 3 with my roommate on a poor imitation for the NES, I realized that for the first time I genuinely felt less stressed, less depressed, and more in-tune with my surroundings.

I'm not saying that my extreme measures are going to work for everyone. I'm also not going to profess myself as the next guru of digital minimalism, and how I've Marie Kondoed my technology to perfection. All of that would be dishonest. The truth is, life is messy, and I am a member of the human race. I fully intend to stumble. I know I'm going to fail. And you know what? That is okay. I am giving myself permission to fail in this endeavor- but I'm not giving myself permission to stop trying.

Throughout this blog, dear reader, you are going to see from me the good, the bad, and the ugly. I'm going to tell you when I stumble, how hard I fall, and what I'm doing to correct it. Who knows? Maybe this will inspire some of you to do set down your smartphones and look up, too.

Until next time, dear reader.