Cell Phone Free

So, a little over a month ago, I let my phone expire, and I didn't bother to do anything about it. Partially motivated by the fact that I moved to a dead zone for the particular cell phone company I was using (though they tried to convince me that I had service), and partially motivated by the desire to eliminate a hefty monthly bill. At first, I admit I was a little nervous. After all my smart phone did everything, calendar, contacts, it even connected me to my email, facebook and the various blogs I follow.

A lot of you are probably wondering where the silver lining is. Well, I feel a lot more free, and I have been able to focus better. I get sucked into constant updates at my fingertips as easily as the next person, but overall, I had to be honest with myself and admit that responding to a friend's status could wait until the next time I was at the computer. So I took the plunge, I got rid of the cell phone and you know, within a week I rediscovered quiet. It's amazing how much easier it is to focus on a project when you don't have alerts and updates interrupting your train of thought every few minutes. I know, some of you are saying "why not just turn your phone off?" Well, it's not that simple when you have a 5 year old, a few times when my phone was off people needed to reach me and couldn't and that experience has made me terrified to repeat that. Luckily it was nothing major, but just the thought of "what if it was an emergency" haunts me.

So aside from missing my alarm function, and my calendar tracking my daily life for me, syncing up my google calendar to my phone, I am enjoying this newfound freedom. The other day I talked to a friend on the phone for 2 hours, not once did I think to myself "I wonder how many minutes I've used for this month." So while, it is taking some getting used to, I realized that I let something that started out as a luxury masquerade in my life as a neccessity. Now I am beginning to wonder what other things have hidden themselves in my day-to-day life pretending they need to be there.