M-F Camp Week #2: Leaning Into the Slower Pace
Loved this pic of G that came across my camp pix feed yesterday:
I don’t know how they achieved this magic (or maybe she only posed once and then headed to the sidelines, who knows!). But I love seeing it. Note the shorter and WATERPROOF cast — she got it replaced on Friday!
Anyway, I am home living The Slower Life, and I am proud of myself for not adding in a whole slew of projects that would make things . . . less slow.
It’s (very) temporary — this is the second week of 3 total. But I am enjoying it and feel like I will go into the school year feeling a lot more ready than I did last year.
Planned this week:
Tonight –> A is home (will pick her up from gym @ 7:30)
Tomorrow –> meeting my friend for dinner
Thursday –> out with Josh (we are doing weekly dates during this rare opportunity!)
Last night I made dinner — PrepDish inspired but greatly enhanced by peaches a friend sent me from California!
Some kids may have whined about this (actually it probably would have gone over reasonably well EXCEPT for the grains) but I loved it.
I am reading this:
I heard about it on Deep Questions and was intrigued. The author ditched his phone for an entire year. He notes that “he had it with him so he could call in emergencies, but it was off.”
So I guess his wife fielded all kid-related texts, calls, WhatsApp messages, sports team notices, etc. Right?
I keep reading about moderation being impossible for phone use, but for me it seems . . . MOSTLY achievable? Yesterday I had 1 hr and 35 minutes of screen time, according to Apple.
The camp nurse called me at 7:30 pm to tell me that “G’s arm hurt a little bit after running around but then she said she was fine.” Which . . . okay, I’m not ENTIRELY sure that I needed to know that, but I think it was very reassuring to G to know that I was called. I guess she could have called a landline, but a) we don’t have one and b) what if I weren’t home?
Anyway . . . I am sure I will get to the part where he acknowledges the huge amount of privilege and autonomy he has in order to be able to shut off completely (and the work/mental load juggling that someone else HAS to be doing, if he has opted out) but I haven’t gotten to that part yet.
I would call this a pretty balanced screen day — I really didn’t spend time doing anything on that device that I didn’t want to be doing or regret.
I guess my personal feeling is that there are apps that are quite addictive and toxic for some people, and in those cases abstention can be the right answer. But to abandon the device? We’d need some major cultural shifts in order to make that realistic in 2025. I think (hope) there is a happy medium for most people.
15 Comments
I am with you on phone moderation. I went 9 months with a dumbed-down iPhone and while it was a great experiment, it wound up just being really inconvenient in the end. Now the burden is on me to use this tool responsibly, which I am much better about now. I’ve noticed my screen time creeping up lately and this is a good reminder that I don’t actually like it that way!
I do notice you don’t have email listed as one of your categories above. Do you not have email on your phone?
I try not to do much email on the phone – prefer laptop! It’s there if I need it. Sometimes when I’m in a “checky” mode I look at it more but yesterday I think just too busy doing other things.
Richard’s take on being able to shut off his phone for a year IS super annoying… like, even phone calls? Why not just get a flip phone?
some of his vignettes involve flip phones but he apparently just turned his off!
Has someone checked in to see how Richard’s wife is doing? Lol. I kid… hopefully he addresses his privilege in being able to do this.
I don’t look at screen time on my phone because it’s basically the equivalent of a laptop for me, so it’s looks worse than it would if I used a lap top for blog reading/commenting, responding to comments, etc. I also spend a good chunk of time on the NYT site playing spelling bee, connections, wordle, etc. I don’t like doing spelling bee in the NYT ap so a good amount of time can be spend on chrome working on daily word puzzles. There isn’t really anything I do that makes me feel “yucky” since I don’t have social media!
Ooh will need more updates on the book… it sounds intriguing, nonetheless! I agree completely that it seems so far fetched to just NOT use a smartphone these days (or have one turned off), but at the same time, isn’t it weird how a mere ~20 years ago NONE of us had a smartphone and somehow we were still able to live perfectly fine?? It’s just so mind blowing to think about. Apparently somehow the schools and camps still communicated with our parents and no one thought twice about going out to dinner without being able to get in instant contact with the babysitter.
I feel like your screen time is super low and totally in the “good’ zone! As you know, I rashly deleted all email apps and social media from my phone a couple weeks ago now, because I was so fed up with constantly feeling pulled to check them. Still going strong! It feels really good. (I do feel comforted that I could easily re-install my Gmail app if I “had” to check something urgent, but it takes a good ~1-2 minutes for my phone to re-download it.) Somehow my pickups are still well over 100 though, I think 140 yesterday?! What the heck. My screen time isn’t as low as yours but drastically lower than when I had email/social media on my phone. Now I’m working on not keeping my phone right by me all the time, which ironically is what Cal recommended in his ep yesterday.
I would definitely try non phone on weekends, starting from this weekend. I actually prefer no phone when on vacation with the family. .everyone is so much in tune with the experience. during the week a lot of life logistics require phone, even our condominium guard text me when someone comes to deliver a package. I’m curious to know what you’ve learned with this book, other than it’s okay not to rely on phone. 🙂
I used my phone constantly on my last vacation for planning purposes. It enabled me to leave my computer at home. And also, we had downtime most afternoons and I have absolutely no problem using that time to scoll tiktok or whatever has replaced tv and movies. What would you have people do instead? I can’t and don’t want to engage productively with my family at all times, even on vacation!
From googling, it looks like the year he turned off his phone was 2020 – perhaps the least burdensome year in which to do this experiment from a household management perspective. I’m curious to know if the book goes into what his usage looks like post pandemic.
But I also have to say – if you didn’t have a cell phone then you would likely get a landline, and if you weren’t home when the nurse called she would have left a message and it would have continued to be a nothingburger.
I got an apple watch because I wanted to always know if daycare needed to get in touch with me if Simone had a seizure and I was tired of carrying my phone everywhere. It has been years since anyone has called with a legitimate emergency. Years! But of course I will never turn my phone off for a year. Not gonna happen. But I think my situation is the exception and not the norm. Even an ordinary emergency – it would be okay if there was a minor delay in getting notification. I think back to my daughter’s first seizure. I got notified right away but I was still at work an hour away and there was nothing I could actually do from that distance. I wasn’t in control and whatever was going to unfold was going to unfold.
Enjoy the slow life while it’s here!
I think it’s avoiding the extreme is alway a good policy. It’s fine to spend a few hours away from our phones, but a year is too much and as you point out, most likely pushing our phone stuff on to someone else.
I am trying to minimize the number of checks that I do on my phone each day, since it’s not adding anything to my life, and 9 times out of 10 it’s just making me more bored. I think that’s serving me much better than not using my phone at all.
lol as soon as I sw that book was by a dude, I had a critique ready to go– you nailed it.
With The Slower Life capitalized like that, I can’t help but think…possible next book title? Haha!
At first I read the author’s name as Richard Simmons and I had so many immediate and complicated feelings.
I guess I still have those feelings, but not because a) he’s dead b) sweating to the oldies, etc
Anyway, I get my dander up when I read about things like this, like dude, we are living in a society. Just don’t scroll instagram. Of course it’s a man, a woman would never be like “oh no worries, I’m sure the kids are fine.” While I think minimizing phone use is generally a good thing, eschewing technology altogether is a) stupid b) unattainable for the vast majority of people.
I’m very interested in this book and how it came to be, because I sometimes wonder if it’s book-worthy to even discuss living mostly smartphone free from 2021-2023 as I did. It seems a lot of the issues with going smartphone or phone free do feel really gendered, and it’s made me so aware of the gender differences in phone use (did you hear Cal Newport’s recent talk on texting/messaging apps?).
I could probably turn off my phone for a year but I would need to ensure my husband was answering all school calls, and arranging any social life I wanted to have (or I wanted for the kids). Or I would just have to drastically lower my standards on how many people we saw socially and how quickly I wanted my kids collected from school (although I have not had one of these calls in a year, so maybe I’m overemphasizing this in my mind)
One of the bigger struggles I have now with the idea of not having a smartphone is google maps and navigation – I use it a lot to get to new places. In 2021-2023 I wasn’t really going new places so it wasn’t an issue. It might be that he found a point in time where phoneless living was easier based on world circumstance.
That said, I don’t like the fact that I pickup my phone 50 times a day, which means I’m looking at it on average every 20 minutes all day long, which may be fine but doesn’t always sit well with me.
I thinkI’ve heard of this book- if I’m thinking of the same book, the person who reviewed it complained that it didn’t have enough real advice about how to “unplug”. It was just more of his story, which is fine, but the subtitle does lead you to believe you’ll be getting practical tips. You’ll have to let us know.
Enjoy the week! I’m glad you’re getting a little break.