Put Down The Phone. Or, Disconnect yourself.

One of my favorite things to do is go to live performances. Concerts, stand up, plays, musicals all are welcome ways to spend an evening. When I go to a show it's always kind of amazing the number of people who are fixated on their phones. Recently when I saw Chris Rock we were asked to put our phones into special locked bags as a way of stopping people from taping the show or being disruptive. Of course the entire time we entered the arena the audience complained about  the inconvenience of not having their phones. I'm not going to pretend that I wasn't annoyed too. Once the show began and I stopped checking the time on my obscured phone I was able to enjoy myself without documenting and posting every second of it. Actually paying attention to the show and not being preoccupied with cataloging it was refreshing. It made me think about the countless times I've watched a concert and sat with my phone in front of my face recording a song instead of letting myself enjoy the moment and remember the time. That's a much better way of going about things. 

Detaching myself from my technology worked to help me stay engaged in the moment. That's something I think people take for granted. When given the chance to really lose yourself in something, take it. Focus of that kind allows you to truly experience something, internalize it and stop the extra movement of your brain for a while. Performances in particular give you the chance to get lost in someone else's world for a while and stopped worrying or concerning yourself with your own. Often I find myself mired in the trenches of the chaos that is my day to day existence. Instead of being a driver on the road of life I'm a passenger in a bullet train to hell pushing myself deeper and deeper into self inflicted madness.  A huge help was dumping my phone for a while. There's a weird anxiety born from the idea of waiting for Facebook updates and random texts from people in your circle. Having my phone off my hip and out of my mind felt great and gave me an almost new clarity.  When I got home, I noticed that I never took my phone out of airplane mode. Once I turned off plans mode I realized something else: the world didn't end. So it got me thinking. Do I really need to be on my phone nearly as much as I am? I'm a marginal user of social media but even that short amount of time adds up. My true vice on my phone is YouTube and accordingly it's going to be my biggest adjustment. My challenge to myself is to be as engaged in the real world as possible tomorrow and to use my phone as little as possible. My progress will be documented mentally and findings relegated to memory. There will be little if any posting to social media save for updates to the blog and I'll try to keep my attention fixed on more important socially engaging tasks and activities like talking to people in person or spending time outdoors. That connection makes me feel more alive and also gives me the opportunity to not read into conversation and what is said therein. I don't feel as alienated and that makes me feel good too. I struggle with a feeling of being disconnected to people. That disconnection  leads to added anxiety that is compounded by the constant search for online stimulation. Essentially I lose control of my real self and try to live in a new space all online and on my phone. The positives of disconnecting have demonstrated themselves in a few ways. First, I don't get sucked into the social media vortex. That's a dangerous place for me to get lost. When I see everyone I know having either 1- a much better time than I do or 2- having a significantly tougher time than I am I feel like shit. These incidental moments carry some heavy weight. I become fixated on the fact that I'm sitting in an office at a computer screen talking to strangers about their money and hearing story after story that bring me down when I compare (stop that!!!) myself to them. Seeing someone in my life on a water slide on a weekday doesn't help that. I want to be on a water slide. Hell, I'll take a regular slide. It's better than sitting in traffic and on a phone! But that's just a moment. The next there could have been alligators in the pool and they could have been gobbled up. If they posted that picture I would probably feel differently. But not much. Because I'm tough to please. Point is I'm fixated on others good time when I go online. My blog doesn't have enough readers and my art isn't reaching enough people. That pisses me off and I don't do anything about it just get pissed off. I'm not constructive with my time which also pisses me off. Basically I annoy myself to no foreseeable end. And I should cut that out. Not being tethered to my phone has helped me focus on what I'm doing and experiencing as opposed to what others have done, are doing and have gotten. At the end of the day I'm what matters most to me because I depend on me. Let the moments pass by on social media and leave them to that: moments. Don't spend the majority of my day looking at others. Don't watch a show happening in front of me through the screen of my stupid phone while I record life. Live it. Be in the here and now. Experiment with taking the cord out of your asses and try to take it all in as it happens. 

But right now, I really need to figure out how to get this goddam bag off my phone. My notification sound went off and I'm sure I'm missing something amazing.