What I learned about myself when my phone died..

As a teacher who has lamented the addiction to technology by our younger generation, I discovered I have a lot to learn..

When I had my hip replaced last winter, sometime during that pain and pain killer addled time, I changed my ICloud password, which I promptly forgot.When I returned from a recent camping trip with my brother, after shutting my phone down, it refused to reboot past the apple screen. Through my technical prowess, I managed to put my account into activation lock, and have been shut out of my phone for a week, and have discovered a few little tidbits about my phone addiction…

I am much more attached to my phone than I thought.

Being a semi-retired teacher who does the books for my wife and tries to keep the back end of the business cleaned up, I certainly am not in demand for instantaneous communication with all of the world, yet I find myself thinking that I need to check my phone every 15 minutes.You never know when you might miss that all important facebook post with another cute animal, or what the weather will be like in the next 15 minutes or some other meaningless reason to check that screen. I think this addiction has become checking the phone every 15 minutes, even without a prompt.

I found myself twice on the line with Apple help support, and actually getting upset at the fact that through my own fault I did not have access to my phone. Having lived most of my life without this technology did not prepare me to live without it.

Last thing at night, first thing in the morning

I suspect that I am not alone in this habit.One of the last things that I would do every night, and one of the first activities in the morning was to check my phone.I realized that instead of reading before I would go to sleep, like I did for the first 55 years of my life, I would watch part of a movie or check social media just one more time. I have found out that I really don’t need that last 15 minutes of the Mariners game, or worse a missed episode of the “Walking Dead, no wonder I sometimes had nightmares!

I need to keep my calendar in my head

My phone has become my substitute for my memory.I have not been cognizant enough to even remember that I have appointments this week without a reminder popping up on my phone.I need to become more aware of my schedule.

What I have learned

The world continues to function, even without a smart phone.If we all would just learn to put it down and listen to each other, the world would be a better place.I am going to try.