A Little Experiment....In Kicking My Technology Addiction

I am currently watching the sleet outside shift over to snow as it gets colder and this winter of Polar Vortexes, thundersleet, and grossly misjudged "accumulations of less than an inch" continue to torment me. This new round of snow days follows swiftly on the heels of a long solitary 8 hour drive back from Nashville. In this time, I have had a lot of room for my mind to wander.

In those meanderings, I found myself thinking about the progression of technology and my history with cell phones. I am one of those people that always managed to have the latest or within one season of the latest tech. I had a pager in the 90's when that was THE thing to have. I had one of the infamously indestructible Nokia bricks as my first cell phone and I have progressed up the technological ladder with that industry ever since. 

All that being said, I am well aware of the two sides of the technology and social communications arguments. I have witnessed myself at a table full of friends and more than half of those people being engaged with their phone if not all of them. We have played the "phones in the middle first one to touch pays the tab" game (and were all too cheap to want to lose so it worked like a charm). While I love the convenience of smart phones and the information they offer to my fingertips, I also agree that there is such a thing as too much time devoted technology. Not just time devoted to. There are true cases of addiction out there. 

So, I have decided to conduct an experiment on myself. 

I am going to start with 30 days. In those 30 days, I am going to restrict my phone use to text messages, phone calls, and health tracking apps. I will only use the music option for when I am hiking. I will carry my laptop and use it for all my information seeking and social media needs. I will start reading paper books again starting with my copy of World War Z. I have a camera. I have a very nice camera. I have photo editing software and used to be pretty good at creating stunning photos. So, I will start carrying my camera with me. And my drawing supplies. 

Does this mean I will look like a college student again? Probably, but I don't mind carrying a back pack and planned on doing it more for my hiking anyway. However, I can already tell that letting go of eBooks will be the biggest challenge for me. I have grown to LOVE the ease of access and compact nature of ebooks. Doesn't matter, though. I will make it. They say it takes 28 days to form an addiction or habit. It stands to reason it would take 28 days to fully break one. And I can admit there is an addiction to technology in this girl! 

I remember quitting smoking and how hard that was. I would like to think that this will be easier, but I am sure that would be faulty thinking and only hurt me later. As a matter of fact, I KNOW it will be as hard as quitting smoking because I just reached for it to look up the number to a pizza place. Ten minutes in and the automated habits are fighting back. So, wish me luck and I will be posting on my progress. 

-Nerdy Goth

(wow...I'm a little nervous...)

The current state of my home screen on my phone. I think I am off to a good start.