Cell Break

I
recently revisited a piece I wrote in 2013 about a Wall Street Journal essay by a then-40-year-old investment banker describing his experience of living without a cell phone for two decades. He cited the statistic that, as of that writing, 21 million American adults didn’t own one either — not just a smartphone, but no cell phone, period.

I wrote that I found that figure both surprising and heartening, and also a bit deflating. Here I’d thought I was doing quite well, thank you, for firmly insisting on holding onto my old-fashioned cell phone, and along came this survey to inform me that tens of millions of other Americans were doing entirely without. I do wonder, though, what the figure is now, nearly six years later.

I went on to speak of some of the practices I’d put in place regarding cell phones and their place in my life. I mentioned that I’d never even consider getting a hip holster for my phone, which would make it too much a permanent part of me. Instead, it lay in my shirt pocket and on perpetual “vibrate” mode.

I also noted a few personal rules I’d adopted for sending messages: “I only respond to messages but don’t initiate them, and even then, there has to be a good reason for me not to actually call the person back instead of sending a message; and I write back using fully formed sentences, punctuation and all. Weird, I know, but effective for my purposes. Better weird than wired, you might say.”