At night, I came home, put my phone down, and switched it to airplane mode. My phone got to sleep in, all charged up and cozy near the oven, and I got to go about my phone-free business until I felt like I’d had time to myself that wasn’t ruled by an inexplicable desire to see what was happening on the social media feeds of baby animals and glossy strangers. Using an alarm clock for a week eliminated my need to even think about my phone in the mornings, let alone look at it, until my teeth were brushed, face washed and lotioned, with a few stretches well underway, my now-habitual morning journaling complete. This has helped me before. But the alarm clock thing - buying one, first of all, then finding the batteries for it, then learning to trust it, and finally, actually using it - was something of a revelation.
Like a tap on the wrist.) I also remind myself to put my phone on airplane mode. (Still, it’s sightly helpful nonetheless. Most recently, I downloaded the new iOS, which lets me put time limits on all apps that need limiting. I have implemented stay-away-from-the-phone techniques before. While I’m looking at my screen, I can hear my own internal dialogue shouting, “YOU ALWAYS SAY YOU DON’T HAVE TIME TO DO X ANYMORE AND YET HERE YOU ARE WATCHING VIDEOS OF BABY COWS.” I hate that I have become someone who literally cannot remove her hand from her phone. There is nothing about this behavior that calms me, soothes me, makes me feel good about myself. I think it’s causing poor sleep, giving me weird dreams, contributing to my anxiety, digging bad-habit nails further and further into my routine. Again: Instagram, email, Yelp!, for some god awful reason.Īnd I hate it. So I check, check, check, which leads to other kinds of checking. It’s a compulsion, yes - you can pre-set these to go off at the same time/same day for eternity - but I don’t trust my phone any further than I can throw it, and you know I can’t throw it or it’ll break. Because the problem is, the last thing I do before I climb into bed is check the alarm. So too is the fact that I check it all day long, throughout the evening - while watching television, while eating, while doing nothing - and, naturally, before I go to sleep. On my best days, I’m up right away when I’m at my most realistic, I hit the snooze button but the moment I’m eyeballs fully open, my phone is in my hand, and there I am, doing stuff on it: scrolling through Instagram, checking my inbox of emails that no one wants a half-asleep early morning reply to, reading the news, Instagram again. I use the ringtone “Ripples” to make all of it less horrifying. Talked on the phone, talked on AIM, listened to music - all in the same vicinity of the clock, which kept track of my day and the hours that passed, but didn’t control my life.Īt 6:20 a.m. I didn’t otherwise interact much with this particular clock until it was time to set the alarm before bed, save for the odd glance, of course, to identify what time it was. Then I’d get up, awake despite it all, and carry onward with my day. On repeat until it was clear I was about to be late.
#Phone alarm clock series#
I’d groggily reach my hand to the floor, bat it around until my fingertips made contact with circular ticking piece of plastic, beg its arms to embrace 10 more minutes, stabilize it back on my nightstand (all this is the act of the cat’s owner, by the way), and then, the series of noises would repeat:
It would go off and I’d whack it off the counter. In high school, my relationship with my alarm clock was like that of a cat and a cup of water. The reason: I thought an alarm clock just might be the antidote to my very real phone addiction. I’ve been knocking one over all week long. Look, you can do whatever you want to do in theory - I’m not your mom - but you really can’t throw your smartphone made of glass and money across the room and expect it to survive.Īn alarm clock, however…those little things are surprisingly sturdy.
0 kommentar(er)
