Last week I was having coffee with my friends and their kids. It’s one of my most favorite things to do because I feel like a lot of the time, we forget how important face-to-face interaction is in our relationships.  When we were talking, I mentioned to my friend Kellory that every time she doesn’t respond to a text message, I feel jealous. Like, I wish that I could be so untethered from my phone that I could go let more than 90 seconds go by without responding to a text. I can barely even go 90 seconds without checking my phone to see if I’ve received a new update. I don’t like that about me.

We finished our coffee and I drove over to the library to get a new book. On my way back out to my car, I pulled out my phone to send a text to Ryan. Just then, I dropped it on the concrete. Now, look, I’ve dropped my phone approximately four bazillion times since I’ve owned it and never ever has it ever cracked. I knew it was a matter of time. I picked up my phone off the ground and to my horror, this thing was utterly and completely shattered. Just… like… obliterated.

Since it was already set up to send a text, it went ahead and sent Ryan some texts. I don’t know how but it did. It was writing random letters that the phone, then, autocorrected into something that made Ryan think I’d had some kind of a stroke. He was truly concerned. I don’t remember exactly what my phone told him but along with the gibberish was definitely the word “bad”? Which… just… that’s not a comfortable text to receive.

So I drove right down to my phone place where everyone is awesome and they were like, “you have excellent insurance on your phone which means that we can repair it for about $30.”
And I was like, “Okay but that kind of falls under the category of ‘okay’ insurance, not exactly ‘excellent’ but semantics I guess.”
And then they were all, “Oh… but you’ll be without your phone for 10 days.”
So, I was like, “Again… ‘excellent’ isn’t exactly a word that I would use to describe this but whatever.” (Full disclosure they did give me other options to get it fixed faster but your girl’s on a budget.)

But I was kind of excited about being forced to be without a phone for ten days. Like, I can still text Ryan via my computer. I can still Instagram on my iPad (which is one of the only ways I market this here blog so I didn’t want to go 10 days without using it). We’ll make do.

I have not missed text messages. I have not missed phone calls. I have not missed being easily accessible to everyone that I know.

I have missed not being able to easily and quickly photograph the beautiful things that I encounter in my day. I didn’t realize what a big part of my life that was until it was gone. I like that. I like celebrating and hoarding the little beautiful things that I see every day. Mostly shadows and reflections or garbage on the ground or leaves or lists or handwriting.

I have noticed that without the immediate gratification of dictating my whole entire day whether by telling a story via text or writing an on-the-go Facebook post, I have more words. I have more words to write. This week without a phone has been one where I feel filled to the brim with words to write and things to tell you about in due time. Isn’t that nice?

I think for that reason and that reason alone, I’d like to give myself more phone time-outs. Because it’s good for my work. Or at least, it’s good for my brain and a good brain does good work.