Forums » Smalltalk » Day With No Phone

I went to my mom's, night before last, and I did NOT take my phone. It was the first time I had been without internet for...a long time.

I had been on my phone almost constantly in the days leading up to that. Chatting and role-playing on RpR. When I say constantly, I mean, like, almost 16 hours a day.

I would start to get nervous and antsy if I didn't have my phone in my hand. It was becoming a thing.

At my mom's, I had been constantly on my phone, with the exception of, like, "I can't get my shoe on," or "can you refill my water bottle?" or "I accidentally spilled milk in my shoe." Truly necessary point-blank requests, I would not say no to, but the entire rest of the time, I was in bed, on my phone. So I left my phone at home, finally. So what happened, you might be wondering.

Well, I did start getting antsy, just like a smoker going cold turkey or something. I had to fill the void. I turned on the radio. I turned it up LOUD (for some reason that helps). Feeling the vibration of that music in my body did a little bit to satisfy the craving...for...whatever the heck it is I crave.

I don't even know what to call it. Mental stimulation? Emotional stimulation? Engagement? Engrossment? Complete engulfment in something?

For some reason, loud music helps. You feel like you're engulfed in something.

I also bought cigars. I sometimes smoke swisher sweets, but rarely. The day I left my phone, I bought several packs and chain smoked them a bit. Then, I got the random urge to buy alcohol. So I bought a bottle of whiskey, which remains unopened...the urge for that went away (and I don't have any problem with drinking or anything, just by the way. If I would've had any, it would've been like two drinks and that's it. I don't drink to excess. Mainly because a few get me feeling good, and more than that result in a hangover, which is no fun at all).

Another effect of not role-playing for a day after role-playing non-stop for weeks was that I got more needy and desperate for deep conversation (isn't that weird? DEEP conversation only).

Sandra was with me, helping me run errands, and all of a sudden I was feigning and I tried to make her help me fill this inexplicable craving, and it worked a little bit, but not really.

I think writing is such an intimate act (even when writing by yourself), that I was feigning for intimacy. So we went from near silence listening to the radio and talking about her job to this:

Me: "Do you think people are more than the sum of our parts?"

Sandra: "Yeah, of course. We have to be."

Me: "Okay, Sandra...tell me something. Do you think Sigmund Freud was right?"

Sandra: "About...?"

Me: "That all of our behaviors come from one of two core motives: the desire for sex, and the desire to be great?"

Sandra: "What does that mean the desire to be great?"

Me: "You know... greatness. To make a huge impact. To be the best at what you do. Greatness. To have social status."

Sandra: "Well, no...some people are happy being a housewife, or being a mother, just having a little family and a modest house. That's all I want."

Me: "But what if you get all of those things someday, and you're still not happy?"

Sandra: "Well yeah, if your kid doesn't like you, or if partner doesn't spend time with you (see the dig there?), then you might not be happy. But then you just try to fix it."

Me: "So you believe that happiness is possible. Given the right set of objective circumstances, you'd be happy, and if you're not, there's some definite set of circumstances that would make you happy? Happiness is possible?"

Sandra: "Yes."

Me: "Okay. Well...let me tell you why it's hard to stop role-playing and chatting for a day, and you tell me if you understand."

Sandra: "What?"

Me: "Here's why it's so hard to stop role-playing. I have this feeling--this gnawing, nagging feeling, and it's boring into me, all the time, and it's always there. And I never thought there was anything I could do about it. I always thought it was inevitable, so I was able to just live my life and put up with it being there."

Sandra: (looks up from book) "...with what being there?"

Me: "Grrr...that feeling. That gnawing feeling inside of me, like a hunger. It's like a craving for intimacy or something."

Sandra: "What do you mean? Why can't you be intimate with me? I give you emotional intimacy."

Me: "Yes, yes--you do. That's not what I'm talking about. What I mean is...not romantic, just on a human to human level-- it could be with a bunch of people. It's like the urge to matter to people, to matter at all."

Sandra: "Why are you trying to matter to a bunch of people--you can't even take care of your responsibilities to me and your mom."

Me: "Ugh! You're stopping me in the middle of my thought and you're not even letting me get to the point! Just listen to the whole thing and then tell me if you understand it or not."

Sandra: "Okay, go ahead."

Me: "Okay, the feeling I get that's always there, always in the background...I never knew there was a way to relieve it, but when I'm writing stories, when I'm role-playing, for the time that I'm role-playing, that feeling goes away, and I don't feel it. It's like, there's relief. And for a moment, everything's perfect. Even though the outside world is not. So right now, not having my phone--just having move around and exist in the world of matter, and space, where things don't happen at the speed of thought, where the gnawing, nagging hunger is back and constant and won't go away, when I know that it will be gone if I am roleplaying--of course it's hard to stop. Of course it's hard to go a day without my phone. Does that make any sense to you at all?"

Sandra: (looks up at me from her book): "I still don't get you."

Me: (sighs) "I know. I know you don't. Because you don't have that. I don't know why I've always had that nagging, empty feeling that other people don't have."

Then she said something really profound. She said,

"It's probably because your family's spread out all over the country, and you were never really close to your family."

"Oh, wow. So you think I'm trying to build a family? The family environment? A group of people you can basically tell anything too?"

Sandra: "Well no, I didn't say that..."

Me: "Well, but that kind of makes sense..."

We went through every deep thing I could think of. It was so odd. Then I gave up and we went back to light stuff and went shopping.

Later that night, and for the next day, I had no phone with internet.
What did I do? I grabbed a handful of computer paper and a pen and literally spent the next 5 hours writing 20 pages in a short story. And it was just as addictive as role-play.

So maybe I'm addicted to writing, and can that be all bad? I think it's an anti-anxiety thing for me; I get the urge to be completely enveloped in a world, completely engrossed in it, whether it's writing, or music, or anything else.