Dear Reader,
This past weekend was not intentionally part of my unplug experiment, but it was a wonderfully perfect addition.
We spent the weekend upstate in a small town camping at a local state park. As soon as we arrived the phone service was nonexistent. Without GPS we had to do a little old-fashioned troubleshooting to find the park entrance, but it all worked out.
As soon as we entered the park to check in, we caught our friends on their way out to buy ice and firewood. We set up the tent and our camping gear, and when they returned we lit a small fire to make a “quick” lunch before heading out on a hike.
The hike was a bit of a ways from our campsite, so we got in the car with only a vague idea of how to get there (again, no GPS or service of any kind) and adventured our way to the hiking site. We found the hike, and enjoyed a lovely walk alongside gorgeous scenery and a reservoir.
These friends love playing the game “20 Questions” specifically around a movie topic, so on our leisurely walk each of us picked a movie and the others had to guess which movie it was in 20 questions or less, with only yes/no answers.
I had chosen the movie “Labyrinth” and there was a lot of information about this movie I realized I didn’t know.
Let’s just say that my friends were not so pleased with me that I was wishy-washy on some of the answers to their questions. It also turned out that two of the members had never seen it, so my choice was a bust. I realized through this exercise that I rely so heavily on the internet for anything that I might need to know. Not that knowing movie trivia is that useful, but there were lots of other instances over the weekend that I wished I could look up the answer to a question or solve a dispute by searching the topic of discussion.
Eventually, most of our unanswered questions slipped away unnoticed. I thought maybe I should write them down and look them up again later, but in the end I didn’t really care what the answers were. We live in an age where we need to know everything, and we need to know it right away. Are there benefits to living that way? Are there negatives to having everything at our fingertips? I’d say one negative for me is that I’m not forced to try to remember anything useful, since I can always just look it up. Another negative is that I might not prepare as much as I could, such as looking up the region before traveling there assuming I’d be able to Google Maps the full route.
On our trip, I was also forced to come to terms with my need for instant everything.
To make a meal, we had to spend at least a few hours at it. Setting up the fire, cooking the food, washing the dishes at a special washing station, then waiting for the fire to die before moving on. Bathrooms and water supplies were at least a 5-minute walk from our campsite. And we had to constantly remove our trash and food scraps to avoid wild animals from scavenging through our things!
(Author’s note: While writing this post I’ve randomly checked my email once already, and stopped myself twice more…)
On our way out of town we stopped by a diner for our last meal. One of the friends had service there and pulled out his phone. His wife expressed that he should enjoy our last meal together phone-free so he put it down on the table. The visual of the phone made me sad. It was there, staring at us during our meal, reminding me of the common practices of daily life.
One table away two kids sat down. They played on their phones, with each other but separately, while their parents sat at the adjacent table. The parents mostly ignored the kids and vice versa. That made me feel sad too.
I know phones have become a necessity, but I wonder what my relationship with others would be like without them.
Sincerely,
Lana
Lana Kitcher is a Productivity and Efficiency Coach, working with entrepreneurs and business owners to “Do Less, Better.” Lana has a passion for helping founders use work hours more efficiently so that they can make time and space for the joys of life.
Lana is also the founder of Bird by Bird, an online community for women starting their businesses. Connect with Lana on Instagram @LanaKitcher.