I Wish I Had a Landline

I wish I had a landline. 

For emergencies. 

An answering machine might be okay too. 

Covid-19 is here and we've been staying at home as much as possible for the last 3+ weeks. As a single person living alone with two cats, the loneliness, boredom, and anxiety take a toll after a while. Maybe you don't live alone, but are experiencing these feelings as well. So what do you do? 

If you're like me, you easily get sucked in to your smartphone. It's hard not to. You check your email. You check your social media. You check the news. You look at your photos. You put it down. And then, 10 minutes later, you pick it up and check all those same things again.

As I fell into this habit, I was reminded of Dr. Jennifer A. King's blog post series on Medium called Covid-19: Our Brains, Our Bodies, Our Trauma. The fourth installment was called Part 4: Stop Scrolling. 

So that's what I've done. I've stopped. On Thursday night, I turned off my smartphone. This is not an entirely new practice for me. When checking work emails and texts gets overwhelming, I tend to turn it off as well. 

Fear not. I am still virtually and digitally connected to the outside world. If I want to check email, social media, or the news, I can use my tablet or laptop. However, I find that I resort to these devices much less often than my smartphone. 

If loved ones want to reach me, they can certainly use social media or email as well. My family knows that a Facebook message is the guaranteed way to reach me - I will check it a few times a day, but definitely not as often as if my phone were on. No ding sounds alerting me (alarming me) of a notification that I absolutely must check. Right now. 

Anxiety. Anxiety. Anxiety. 

The result of my phone being off is that I am more regulated. My body is calmer. My mind is more at ease. 

When will I turn my it back on? Hard to say.  Today is Sunday. And yesterday I did turn my phone on for two hours while I took a drive. It seemed like the safe thing to do. 

But for the most part, at times like this, I wish I didn't have a smartphone at all. How smart is it, really, if it causes dysregulation? For now, for a while, I am outsmarting my phone and keeping it off. 

A landline and voicemail might be nice. Then, if I truly needed to make a call, or receive one, I could - old school style. 

The one feature of my phone that I miss the most when it's off is the camera. I have a digital one somewhere. Maybe I need to find it.