I cannot imagine living without a cell phone. There are so many times when I'm at school or at the store (or let's face it, even driving) when a thought pops into my head and I need to tell someone immediately. If I don't have my cell phone within reach and I can't send out a text right that second, I've got to admit I feel almost a sense of anxiety. My cell phone is basically an extension of my being at this point. However, despite being so immediately connected to every contact in my phone, I've been feeling very disconnected from the people closest to me lately. So far I've managed to narrow down my cell phone issues to three areas:
1. For Karl's job he has to use his phone A LOT; he is a manager and everyone from his employees to his boss need him to be available basically every moment of every day. The texting thing really didn't seem like that big of a problem until Karl got this job. I see his phone about fifty times a day, people expect him to respond immediately so he texts a lot! And this is when he's at home! Because of the wonderful invention of cell phones, my husband has to be working even when he's not working! There is no way for him to ever really be away from his job because someone always needs something and they know he's just a text away!
2. I feel awfully guilty about this second one, and I want to apologize to anyone I've done this to. I admit that I have texted too much while I'm with friends. Whether I was out to lunch with a friend, or hanging out or playing games with friends, I admit that I am guilty of texting while I should have been "present". I've done this, and I've had friends who have done this to me. I've been around people who were checking twitter and facebook and texts in the middle of a conversation with me. It made me feel like I wasn't important, like my friends would rather be somewhere else, doing something else, with someone else. Not a very good feeling, and I'm sorry to say that I have been on that end of things.
3. If you know me, you know that I love my sleep, and you also know that it's very difficult for me to get my sleep. Now, I know people on many different sleep schedules and in many different time zones, and as a result of this, I've found that my sleep gets interrupted a lot by people who want to talk to me a random times. I love hearing from almost everyone who texts/calls me (by that I mean I hate getting promotional texts and calls from computers), but I really need to be able to sleep! Back before cell phones would a normal person have considered calling someone's house at 3 in the morning? I'm going to say probably not, but now that we have cell phones the rules seem to have changed drastically.
All right, the point is, I suppose, that I'm grateful for the technology that allows me to be connected to so many people that I care about, but I need to set some limits so that I can live in harmony with my cell phone :) So, I am making it a goal to not text while I should be "present" with friends/family (if you see me texting you have permission to gently remind me of my goal, haha). Secondly, I'm going to be going "technology-free" between the hours of 11pm and 11am (i.e. my phone will be off). Because of this new plan I may not respond to people very quickly, but I don't want to feel guilty about this! Anyway, that's the deal, this is the plan, and we'll see how this goes!
