Is your phone robbing you of experiences?

what we give up for convenience

Let me tell you a story. It goes like this.

We’re lost.

It’s June 2014 and Chris and I have packed up post college graduation for a wandering amble through Northern Ireland, with only a vague return date some five weeks or so later. We have ambitious plans to hike the Ulster Way, a 636 mile walking route through the six counties of Northern Ireland.

Our only preparation for the trip had been a gift card funded outing to REI, leaving with a nifty looking travel stove, some boots, and a pair of professional looking backpacks. We had faith in our resilient twenty-two year old bodies, so adept at recovering from late night drinking on the river for the past four years. Of course we could plot a course through hills and crags and bogs, sometimes 18 miles a day. Of course we could carry near 100 pound packs through thick heather and over crumbling walls.

Okay I should also mention my hair was red which was weird because I was blonde, had dyed my hair brunette, and was now in some in-between weird hair phase. Anyway - I fit right in!

Well, to no one’s surprise, except perhaps our own, things did not go as planned. We packed too much - nearly all useless for hiking (books, souvenir Guinness sweatshirts, etc.) - and we buckled under those packs. I hardly noticed those stunning, dwarfing views, simply counting my steps till we could rest. On the infamous night when we exploded our stove (no food!) and slept in a cow field (I swear it said ‘campground’ on the map) we started to rethink our plans. The next day we hopped a bus and paid a fortune to send half our things back home and we cut the walking routes in half, opting for buses for the longest sections. Packs lightened, a little chastened, downing a pint or two (Smithwicks for Chris, Harp for me), we set back out on the road.

First things first, I broke our phone. I dropped it in the pool of murky water at St. Patrick’s Well. It had been a pretty basic phone - an international flip phone we rented for the journey. No apps, no internet. But it had calling and texting and was beneficial for calling taxis in a bind or calling ahead to BnBs we wanted to book. Now we looked out at the great expanse of blowing fields, those dramatic windswept golden-grey skies threatening rain, and we felt quite alone

Without a phone, we had to talk to people. A lot. And we were lost, a lot. Neither one of us could read the clunky paper maps we tried to unfurl. They were damp and ripped and we’d have winding nonsense conversations about which county we were actually in and usually end up following some sheep tracks toward (we hoped) civilization.

There was that one weary day, 10 or so miles in, we finally see a town. I don’t think it was the town we planned to stay in but it called to us like a desert mirage. Sanctuary! We passed a horse trotting along the fence line, a friendly nicker, and a farmer walking his sheepdog. “Is there a BnB here? Anywhere to stay?” we asked. “Oh, aye, over the way, you’ll want to find Jan’s place.” He described a big tall grey stone building and we went on wandering.

We found Jan’s place. We were greeted by two barking boxers. An apologetic “woah, boys! woah! Ok!” followed them and a young, ruffled looking man greeted us. It turned out he was a long term boarder and that Jan was out but he didn’t think she’d mind if he let us into her sitting room. So we were let in and waited quietly, our muddy packs at our feet, out of place in this snug front room.

Jan eventually arrived, all blustered Irish hellos and oh what dears! and my goodness, I have ONE room, lucky you, lucky you. And so we had a place to stay.

This scenario played out in many ways throughout our trip.

There was the time we couldn’t find our hostel and a shopkeeper put up her “out to lunch” sign and walked us the mile or so to the door, giving a ‘cheerio and you can buy me a pint later!’ to the owner. There was the time we had no cash (and everything was still cash only in many small towns a decade ago) and the ATM was broken and a woman, seeing our plight, offered to drive us a town over to another ATM. You’d think she may have been planning an easy robbery here, but it never even occurred to us. We had to trust her, we didn’t have a choice not to. She drove us to the ATM and to the steps of an Inn and invited us to her family party the next night.

There was the time the kindly older couple we were staying with (who took us out to tea on our first day and showed us some of the local sacred stones) dropped us off at a local Irish music performance. This was a part of the country where Gaelic was still spoken in schools and we were breathless watching the wild fiddle playing, yips and shouts of delight in the crowd. It was only during the ‘after party,’ when some local schoolchildren began “jamming” (one of the most professional performances I’ve ever seen) that we realized we had no ride. It was dark and we couldn’t even remember the address of the house we were staying. We got to talking with a fellow at the bar who of course knew Trish, the Inn owner, and gave us a lift after chatting over pints for a while, enjoying the music. When we mentioned this saga to Trish in the morning over a plate of her heaping Irish Breakfast (eggs, baked beans, bacon), she laughed and said, “Oh I figured you two made it all the way here from the States - you’d figure out a way back!”

I could go on and on. And that was only on this one trip. There were other trips - phoneless - when I found myself in somewhat perilous situations. When my sister and I were dropped off at the Inn we had booked, down a dark country street in Scotland, only to find the owner was in the hospital and there was nowhere for us to stay after all. We walked the miles back to town at 10 at night, knocked on the door of a woman we had met on our horseback riding trek and slept on her floor. Or the time when my friend Mariam and I found ourselves on the Isle of Skye in a blinding rain late at night at an AirBnb that clearly hadn’t been tended to in a week, rumpled dirty sheets and trash everywhere, and we considered just sleeping in the car. Instead we drove back into town and started knocking on Inn doors until we found a vacant room.

Or that time studying abroad in Oxford when I took it upon myself to plan a day outing to the Cotswolds for me and a group of friends. We had a marvelous time - tea shops, and walker’s gates, and sheep and ponies - and then when it was time to go, realizing I was entirely inept at reading a bus schedule and we had missed all buses back to Oxford for the day. We were helpless and had to wander the little town asking for advice and help. We ended up meeting an owner of a taxi company who somehow knew of our small liberal arts college back in the States (I think he also had a little crush on my friend Margot who worked her charms on him!

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) and got us a discounted ride back to our dorms.

These are the stories I remember and I tell often. These are the misadventures that become funny anecdotes - but more than that, they become legend and myth and lore. They added richness and texture to those travels - they introduced me to people, they frustrated me and stretched me and forced me to trust fellow human beings. They left me feeling helpless and hopeful all at once. They are what I remember, what I will remember, my whole life.

I sometimes think how different things would have gone if we had a smartphone with us. We would have googled the best places to visit - not asked the local bartender. We would have booked ahead on AirBnb - not stumbled into stranger’s sitting rooms. We would have called an Uber - not gotten rides from good Samaritans.

I think now, in my day to day life, of my endless conveniences. Of InApp purchases and streaming and booking services. Of Google at anytime, anyplace. Of Maps and HotSpots and Self Checkout and Lyft and GrubHub. So much convenience, so much less hassle.

So much less life.

Who knows the conversations I’m not having, the people I’m not meeting? Who knows the ways I could have been asked to rise to the occasion, to problem solve, to trust or hope or experiment or try a new way? There are so many things I’m not doing because they are so easy to do from my phone.

And it feels endlessly silly to ‘create’ inconvenience - to go on Airplane mode in a stubborn fit of luddite enthusiasm, only to swipe back to Data at the earliest whim or supposed need.

I’ve been playing with the idea of a dumb phone - you know, those dumb phones that aren’t really Dumb but Smart because they aren’t shiny or flashy or addictive and encourage you to be present to your real life.

Today my toddler broke my Smartphone. Slid it off the table, right onto the chair, crack. I can only assume it was an act of God. Now when I pick up my phone it flashes like an obnoxious strobe light, practically shouting Look away! Look away!

WisephoneII isn’t available for another few months, but I’m considering a preorder.

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I’ll obviously have to figure out an interim solution - I will probably get my screen fixed if I can - but I’m thinking I need more inconvenience in my life. And in reality, the Wisephone II still has a lot of convenience - it has an audio player, it has a camera, it has text and call, it has Maps, it has Notes. What it doesn’t have is Apps, or Email, or Google on demand. Of course I’m thinking about what I’ll give up - Mobile Boarding Passes, the ability to check my daughter into Nature School on Brightwheel and see her cute photos

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- about not being able to send Memes or group messages with the same ease or voice memos on WhatsApp

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I could list a thousand inconveniences. But maybe that will be the feature, not the bug

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. Maybe I’ll need to live slower or less efficiently. Maybe I’ll have to go to the library to print things and talk to the librarian

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. Maybe I’ll need to ask for directions every now and then or arrive in a city with a few less plans. Maybe I’ll have to wait to contact someone, maybe I’ll even have to miss them a little bit. And maybe I won't be able to pay bills or write essays while I’m nursing the baby and maybe that is a good thing. Maybe I’l be bored.

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And my goodness, I’ll still have a laptop with access to more information than was humanly possible at any other era in history. This is not the equivalent of becoming Amish.

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All I know is that last night I had a rare opportunity to read for about three hours straight. So when my toddler woke up with a cough and needed to be rocked and held, I was calm, I was present. My mind was slow. I was there and I wasn’t frustrated. It wasn’t even a particularly good book

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, but I got lost in a quiet way, somewhere else. Somehow this immersion in elsewhere allowed me to be here in a much more real way. What can I say, reading is magic.

I know some people are nodding and some people are smirking. The smirking contingent might be saying, you know what else was inconvenient? The Plague! Look, we’ve advanced - welcome to it! That’s a whole other essay, but I just would say that I think healing is a very different human impulse, and even a very holy one, but monetization and distraction and disembodiment is something else entirely.

Our phones offer us so much, but it comes with a price.

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Hey, Ariel sold her beautiful voice for the chance to meet her handsome prince. Faust literally gave up his soul for knowledge. We all make deals, we all make compromises.

I’m just asking - what price are you paying, what bargain have you struck -

Is it worth it?

1. I know Margot reads this newsletter on occasion - You know it’s true! :)

2. Really my only hang up at this point is that it doesn’t work with Verizon and other providers just aren't as good where I live, so I need to research this some more.

3. I’ll have to talk to them but I assume this Crunchy Crowd must have at least a few digital minimalists among them who have had to sign kids in another way.

4. And to be fair WhatsApp has a desktop version, so could still be used, just not used constantly. And we have Zoom and Email and Letters and a thousand other ways to stay in touch.

5. For a discussion on what it’s like to actually live with a dumb phone I highly recommend this episode of

Tsh Oxenreider

‘s podcast “Drink With a Friend”

6. Our printer is perpetually out of order.

7. remember that feeling?

8. Though we could learn a lot from their approach to adopting new tech.

9. The Last Enchantments by Charles Finch

10. For more on all this (living a tech-smart life) I can’t recommend

School of the Unconformed

enough.