My apps need a nap
I have a love/hate relationship with my phone. It’s a fantastic device. It’s a camera, calendar, and calculator. It’s even a coach. The phone tracks the number of steps I take every day and keeps me off the couch.
This phone does everything but beams me up to the starship Enterprise, but my phone and I might be spending a little too much time together.
On Sundays, I receive a report that tells me the number of hours I’ve spent scrolling, texting, and talking on said device. Hint: It’s way too much. I’m too embarrassed to write the number of hours I spend on the phone down in print, but it’s slipping into double digits.
While I won’t text while driving, I have a bad habit of texting while walking. By now, gentle readers, you are all aware of the danger that this poses to someone like me. Some of you might have gasped aloud as you thought, “Heavens! He can barely walk upright without distractions,” and you’d be correct.
Luckily, I have not yet fallen down any uncovered manholes, but it’s been close.
Side note: My computer wanted to be politically correct. It suggested that I refer to the aforementioned manhole as a maintenance hole. It might be accurate, but I don’t think anyone would know what I meant. P.S.: Maintenance hole sounds far too indecent to use in a sentence in Washington County’s finest newspaper.
But I digress, like I do. Early last week, I clotheslined myself. I was looking down at my phone on the way from the house to my car when I walked into the clothesline. The clothesline, which was drooping down at neck level, nearly garroted me. I almost strangled myself because I was looking at a funny meme.
I imagined myself to be splayed out on the back porch, crushing a spreading swath of wild spearmint growing up from the small, free space between the patio and the driveway. The paramedics could claim I was the most fragrant of corpses. I can see the obituary now, “He died doing what he loved, laughing at a picture of a baby yelling at a dog.”
I have an addiction on the cellular level.
It was a wake-up call to curb my cellphone addiction. The plan is to come in with fewer hours on Sunday’s report card.
I need to have fewer words on Words with Friends. I need to say “adieu” to Wordle. “Adieu” is my opening gambit every morning on the popular New York Times game. (The New York Times is also a newspaper, but if you’re getting only one newspaper subscription, consider the one you’re reading and not the one you’re reading about.)
I have to give my apps a nap.
I have to come up with clever ways to overcome my newest addiction and find some way to stop, drop, and not scroll.
I might need a 12-step program, but I’d have to open an app on the phone to find one.