This is a follow up piece from Kait O’Callahan. Her original piece, Switching Off The Smartphone…For Good, outlined her desire to live a life without a smartphone. So how’s she travelling?
I turn the corner of yet another suburban street, rain tapping impatiently at my face, fist clenched in frustration. I look down at my mobile to see if my boyfriend has returned any of my calls. None of the street signs are familiar to me and I’m lost in a suburb I don’t know, although I’m fully aware I’m only about ten minutes from where I need to be. Like many from my generation, I’m reliant on a calculator for sums, the internet for spell-checking and a GPS for directions. As I turn down another leafy, identical street I mourn the loss of my smartphone and how easily it could have guided me home.
I find myself in the same situation a few weeks later. I’m late to meet a friend because I’ve traveled blissfully past our meeting place and found myself far up in Richmond. I hop off the tram and walk back, calling her to explain my lateness.
“So, how are you coping?” She asks when I finally arrive, “Without the phone, I mean.”
“I’m fine, actually.”
My friend smirks, or perhaps I just imagine she does.
“Missing the maps?”
“Yeah, ok,” I relent, “I miss the bloody maps. I’ve been lost three times. I had to draw a map to get to my new job. It’s bloody annoying. But honestly, that’s it. That’s all I miss.”
And I was telling the truth. The maps really is the only thing I’ve missed since dumping the smartphone over a month ago. I don’t miss the nagging Twitter updates, I don’t miss my easy access to e-mails and the immediate replies they demand, and I don’t miss my constant awareness of my phone’s presence. With my smartphone, I struggled to leave the house without it snuggly tucked in my jeans pocket. If I, by some miracle, did leave it behind, I thought about the messages building up on it and checking it would be the first thing I would do on my return home. It was the first thing I did in the morning, too.
Now, armed with my basic Samsung, I regularly forget my phone. I walk out of the house without it and don’t realise until I’ve already reached my destination. I miss calls, I leave texts without replying and my e-mail doesn’t check up on me, I check up on it. I feel liberated from all the baggage that comes attached to a smartphone (that baggage often cleverly disguised as an app).
Perhaps the best thing, though, is that I can walk down the street alone with my own thoughts, my nose not in my phone. I can chat with a friend over wine and know my full attention is with them. And while I may need to invest in a proper map to make these said meetings with friends, I know it’s worth the cost.
My smartphone may have invaded my life, but it was surprisingly easy getting it back.
Image credit: Kathryn Sprigg Photography
