Originally Posted by
kertong Thank you! I find this "resurgence" movement fascinating - I feel that it isn't only aided by the quality and efficiency that bb offered in the bold era, but I feel a large part of it is driven by the direction society is quickly moving towards. I'm glad to know I'm not alone in wanting to digitally disconnect, but I'm not surprised either.
I was born in 1980, and I grew up in an age where pay phones were ubiquitous, and stopping at gas stations for directions was a regular thing. You and your friend would set a meeting time and place, and if you couldn't make it, you stopped somewhere and made a phone call hoping your friend hadn't left yet. You could still buy cigarettes in vending machines then, restaurants asked if you'd like to sit in smoking vs non-smoking, and when sitting in traffic, there was nothing to do but enjoy the music on the radio and chill out for a while, get lost in your thoughts, etc. Maybe you'd listen to your tape, from one end to the next, before it flipped over to play side B. We were used to enjoying things back then - no frequent skipping, shuffling, playlist swapping, or interruptions back then. It was, for lack of a better word - chill.
These days, I shuttle to and from work, a huge perk that lets me observe and "chill out". I look around my shuttle and 9/10 people have their necks bent down, glued to their phone. I look around outside, and 3/5 cars that I see stopped in traffic have people with their necks bent down, poking at their phone. At restaurant waiting rooms, same story. Even in the restaurant booths I see the lone mom or dad struggling to make conversation with his family as their spouse silently plays angry birds, and the kids are watching youtube on their ipad. I couldn't help notice that small, faint, but nagging feeling at the back of my mind that something wasn't right, that people weren't meant to live like this - something that was easy to brush aside, but once I started paying attention to it, I could no longer ignore.
Now, maybe I'm biased, maybe I'm old and scared of change, and maybe I'm seeing all this through rose tinted goggles - but the 80s-90s weren't perfect by any means, yet I feel like people were happier.
Today, whenever we have "downtime", we pull out our phones. We are slaves to the notifications constantly streaming into our phones, and as soon as we have a free moment, we pull out our phones to keep our minds "occupied".
No wonder people today feel like they have "no free time" - they do, it's just that they spend it on their phone! That feeling of time being a scarce resource really ratchets up stress and anxiety.
Ever since I turned off all the social/entertainment apps on my phone, I found myself pulling my phone out at the first sign of free time out of habit. I'd stare at my phone, realize there was nothing to do on it, and put it back in my pocket. I was then met by free time - something that made me uncomfortable at first. "What do I do now?" "I have ~10 minutes until I have to get up next." It was a foreign concept at first and I admit, the urge to open up facebook or instagram and surf to kill those 10 minutes was really, really, tempting.
After a week or two, I got used to it. I used that time to observe my surroundings, which is where I noticed just how many people were hunched over lost in their phones, oblivious to what was going on around them. "Wow, was I like that?" I found myself wondering.
And for the next 10 minutes, I often did nothing. Absolutely nothing. I would stare out the window slack jawed, watching the cars go by - occassionally lifting my hand to wipe off the puddle of drool that was accumulating in the corners of my mouth. But that period of "nothing" wasn't actually nothing. I noticed these periods of doing "nothing", even if it was only for 5-10 minutes at a time, reset my stress/anxiety levels. Allowed me to recompose my thoughts, baseline myself, and tackle the next segment of work and errands mentally refreshed.
This is something that didn't come to me in one enlightening moment - it took weeks to realize, bit by bit. But I only discovered this because I struck out the biggest time filler of my life - yes, the phone occupies your time in small doses, but it fills every nook and cranny of free time and adds up to be quite a drain - time wise, and mentally as well.
I'm just rambling now, but the reason I wrote this was because I wanted to share something that I am confident you all have felt before, and some of you may have realized this long ago.
Either way - I look forward to my bold 9900 chapter of life. I'll finally be able to smell the roses.