Let me tell you a modern-day horror story: for almost ten days, I didn’t have a phone!

I was on a day trip to Montréal, and my phone just completely died. I thought maybe it just needed a charge, but nope, nothing would bring it back. I had a nicely sculpted chunk of glass.

(Side note: I had been texting with Susan, so eventually I dashed off a quick email: “My phone is completely dead. I can’t even tell what time it is.” She sent back an email that said just, “It’s 11:24.” Is it any wonder I love her?)

At first, I felt a bit lost. I couldn’t take pictures, I couldn’t use maps, I couldn’t text with Susan to coordinate getting picked up at the airport.

But what I noticed is that much of what I was used to doing with my phone, I didn’t really miss. I didn’t have games to jump to when I had a free moment. I wasn’t able to reflexively look up interesting tidbits. I couldn’t anxiously check if I had gotten an interesting email.

I realized I didn’t need those things. It was OK to not have a smaller screen to use when I wasn’t using my larger screen. I started to feel like the phone was like a bag of candy in my pocket. If my pocket is full of candy, I’ll nibble on candy all day long. But when I didn’t have a bag of candy, I didn’t miss it. Sure, sometimes I’d like to have a piece of candy, but not nearly as much as I ate when I always had a bag of candy with me.

Now I finally (USPS can be disappointing...) have a new phone, a Google Pixel. I’ll be glad to have my podcasts back. I can take pictures again. I was lucky not to need a two-factor app in the last week.

I’ll have to see how I relate to it. I’ll have the candy with me, but will I be able to resist nibbling? I wasn’t as bad as some: I never had the impulse to read my phone while standing at a urinal, for example. But I nibbled a lot more than it turns out I needed to. I’ll try to keep in mind how these last ten days felt, and snack responsibly.