When we hit pavement after driving several miles down the single track forest service road, everyone except the driver checked their phones. It had been seven days since we’d had cell service or access to the internet. Conversations lulled as everyone was absorbed back into their phones after a week away. Texts were answered, emails read, and Instagram was scrolled.
It left me, an active participant in the phone checking, feeling hollow. During the seven days without service, I had felt no need, no urgency, to check my phone, but now that the internet was easily accessible, I was sucked right back in. I was overwhelmed by all of the notifications filling my screen while simultaneously a little disappointed that there weren’t more. Had people not thought of me while I was gone?
Truthfully, I hadn’t missed anything important while I was out of service. If anything, I’d gained by being away from it all.
My seven days in the woods had been simple. I woke up at 6 AM, started work at 7, and worked until 5 PM. In the evenings, I’d rinse in the creek, stretch in the sun, then read until it was time for dinner. I’d have dinner with the crew, and we’d play card games after. I was in my tent by 8, reading and journaling. By 9:30 I was asleep, the day finally beginning to fade into night. The only time I used my phone was to listen to an audiobook on the hike to and from our worksite, to take photos, check the map, and to journal at the end of the day.
Each day felt full. I enjoyed the quiet time to listen to my book on the hike in and out each day, the conversations we had, and the satisfying work that we did. The trail slowly opened up behind us as we cleared hundreds of trees from the old trail. The evenings felt wide open. They stretched longer than any evening ever seemed to when I worked my 9-5 job or was on a thru hike.
Without the internet, I had to start entertaining myself. There were no endlessly scrollable apps to absorb me. So, I read. I stretched. I talked and played games with the crew. I watched the clouds float by and tried to identify bird songs. I never did anything that could be considered productive because there was nothing productive to be done. It felt good to do nothing in the warm evening air.
Back in the middle seat of the truck, surrounded by people on their phones, I started to wonder about spending less time on mine when I was back home. The apps on my phone brought very little value to me. Why not try and pare back my usage to the apps that bring value to me? Do I have the willpower to only use my phone for music, podcasts, texts/calls, directions, and notes?
So far, it’s not going so well. I’m three days out from the truck ride as of writing this, and yesterday I had six hours of screen time. In the woods, exactly one week before, I had only 24 minutes of screen time. I don’t even know what I was doing for those six hours. Scrolling my phone while simultaneously watching Netflix, I think? I don’t know. It all blurs together into noise and color, but it leaves no lasting impression.
Which begs the question… Why am I using my phone so much?
I think it’s because it’s the easiest thing to do when there is nothing else to do, and because I crave the little dopamine hits you get from scrolling. I fill the small lulls in my life with my phone because it’s easy to reach for and it absorbs my interest so quickly. I turn to my phone when there’s two minutes left on the timer for the pie I have in the oven. I turn to my phone when standing in line at the grocery store. I turn to my phone when I’m watching TV because for some reason one screen isn’t enough. I turn to my phone to procrastinate all the little tasks I need to do that would probably only take five minutes if I actually did them. I turn it on just to check, just to pass the extra time, and find myself sucked in for dozens of minutes at a time, having gone nowhere and gained nothing.
Even when I don’t want to be looking at my phone, I do anyway because it's easy. It’s easier for me to watch TikTok’s or scroll Instagram than it is for me to open a book and do the work of re-entering the story. The colors, sounds, and the constant allure of seeing what’s going to pop up next hold me captive all the while a heavy feeling I can’t put my finger on wells up in me. Disgust, maybe. I guilt myself over the time I’ve wasted on my phone. I tell myself that I could have been reading, writing, doing literally anything else. But I don’t do those things because the barrier to entry is a fraction larger than that of just picking up my phone. So I sit glued to a screen that only serves to make me feel worse and worse until I finally turn away.
I googled “what did people do with their free time before the internet?” forgetting that I was once a person before the internet. Or at least before the internet as we know it now. What did I do before the proliferation of the internet and smartphones in our lives? I read a lot. I’d hide in my closet when I should have been asleep, writing little stories. I sat on the landline phone with my best friend for hours. I’d hang out with other kids, just roaming the streets in our neighborhoods, because there was nothing better to do. I can still do all of these things, or a version of them, but I don’t.
I want the pace of my life at home to start matching the pace of my life on the trail– 3 MPH, max. Last week, on the daily hikes to and from camp, I observed a patch of Bear Grass beginning to send up its stalk. Each day the plant grew a little taller and the tiny flower buds grew a little larger. I laid on my back on a bed of pine needles and stared up at the sky, watching the trees and clouds moving above me, a raven cawing in the distance. I probably would have been on my phone if I were at home, more interested in some asinine video than what was happening right in front of me. What small, rich, details have I missed over the years?
So, here’s to trying to take back more of my time and break bad habits. I have seven days off at a time now and I don’t want to be spending those seven days rotting in my room on my phone.
I want to slow down this summer. I want to read, write, garden, and hike. I want to float in the middle of a lake on my paddle board. I want to lay in the grass and watch the clouds. Maybe I’ll finally try to pick up an instrument. I don’t know. I have plenty of time as long as I choose to use it.
P.S. How fitting is is that the Surgeon General announced yesterday that social media should come with a warning label much like tobacco and alcohol?