Is it time to break up with my phone?

Source: Apple

After dedicating more and more time to myself in the past few weeks, I’ve come to realise how much of an influence my phone has over my life. To say that I’m always checking it would be a great injustice to how much of a hold it has over me. If it was just that it was within my proximity and that I often checked it, that would be less terrifying as I would have the option to simply move away from it after having a quick peak at my notifications.

Unfortunately, it seems to be a lot more than that.

I was in the shower this afternoon and found myself thinking “I wonder if I have any notifications.” I was in the shower for roughly 10 minutes, which to me should not be anywhere near the threshold in which I can switch off from my phone. After I got out of the shower, I almost instinctively went to grab my phone from my bed to find that I indeed had no notifications. This is another issue. I don’t talk to enough people, n’or have a job demanding enough, to allow for the constant justification of me checking my phone.

Shortly after my shower, I was cooking some food. After putting the food on to simmer, I left my phone on the table away from me so that I could sit back and watch a little television. This was way too difficult. I found myself checking my phone every time I stood up to do anything. Upon reflection, it’s rather alarming to think how much of an impact my phone has on how I go about my day.

It should be noted, my phone does me a lot of favours. Without my Headspace app, my sleep and mindfulness would be greatly impacted. Without my social media, most of my friends would not be able to get in touch with me.

With this in mind however, I think I need to start planning certain times of the day in which my phone should be away from me. How can I really have me time if my phone dictates such a large portion of my life? I was able to sit down for an hour or so today and read a chapter of The Picture of Dorian Gray, one of my favourite books. Just that hour without my phone allowed me to do something that I had been planning to do for months, which was to just sit down and read. Not a difficult pleasure to accomplish, in theory.

If anybody else has had to have the talk with their phone, I’d love to hear how you managed to handle the separation!

The struggle

As some of you may have noticed (though I hope not to overestimate my follower concern) I have not been active within the blogging community for a while and I feel as though an explanation is owed. Spoiler, it is not exciting.

I am currently embarking on my MSc within Human Resource Management and as such, have been trying to find a graduate job that I may be able to embark on when my studies finish in September this year. The majority of my time has been taken up with looking for career options, focusing on my volunteering and generally doing everything within my power to maintain my sanity.

I’m finding that due to the nature of HR as a field, having a large focus upon confidentiality and sensitivity, work experience opportunities are not widely seen in most areas. Though my search will continue, I am hoping to devote more time to reading and writing as I really do miss them and regrettably allowed myself to become too absorbed within my little bubble.

Great to be back and I hope that I can begin to make contributions once more.