okay, so i'm trying something a little crazy for January: NO TEXTING!! crazy! i know! and by crazy, i mean according to someone who keeps trying to text me, not getting me & is super frustrated. well, that will just have to be for Jan & perhaps they should try
medication meditation for January.
this has all been born out of a progression of dissonance i have for technology. i work in technology & it pays the bills, on time & in full most of the time. however, when i walk out of the office, it's the last thing i want to deal with. this is not unheard of for lots of people & their professions. i do, however, know plenty of people that don't mind doing off the clock what they do on the clock. i am not one of those people. perhaps it's because THEY chose their profession & mine kinda chose me. i don't know. but i also spend 10 hours a day doing nothing but installing, configing, & troubleshooting stuff that either doesn't work or doesn't work quite right. so when i go home I JUST WANT IT TO WORK!
in addition, technology was not my chosen study. i actually got my Masters in Interpersonal Communication. i studied communication and relationships between H-U-M-A-N-S not machines - although some days there doesn't seem to be much of a difference! i have always been, and still am, completely amazed by human behavior & communication in particular. so it should come as no surprise that i have an opinion about technology and interpersonal communication. boy do i, but will keep the bulk of that to myself for now.
so this leads me to my current experiment! while i appreciate the convenience of texting, i despise it at the same time. 3 main reasons:
- i'm finding more often that people are engaging texting conversations with me that really would be better served if they would just pick up the phone & call. anyone who works in an office environment has probably experienced the "enough emails, i just need to go talk to this person face to face". after a while, the technology just gets in the way.
- and people are texting me personal stuff (info, requests, etc.) that should be handled in person, if for no other reason, than simple common courtesy. that is a WHOLE other topic people!
- and finally, if you are soooo busy that you can't even pick up the phone anymore to call me, well then, you are just toooo busy for me!
did i mention i majored in Interpersonal Communication? not Impersonal Comunication! and how's it going 2 weeks in?
I FREAKING LOVE IT!!!!
did i say that right? let me check! hells yeah! it's amazing how liberating it is to NOT be tied down to a stupid phone all the time. i'd already been weening myself off in the last couple of months by not taking my phone with me into restaurants. Nacho & i go to breakfast (just the 2 of us) every Sat morning & i took notice one day of how many people where on their phones probably either texting or facesmashing. then when i went home at Thanksgiving, i really took notice of people that were on their phones every minute during Thanksgiving dinner. wow!
don't get me wrong, i too have been a slave to that stupid little device! i too have sat in a restaurant (across from Nacho) and texted. and i don't like it! oddly enough, part of what finally pushed me into this was a reprimand i got at work for checking my phone during a meeting. i was not even aware i was doing it. so when i noticed how often i would pull my phone out during the day to check messages, etc., it made me sick! so here's what i did:
- researched & downloaded an app to auto respond to texts from anyone that i'm not checking texts & they need to call or email me. i'm currently using AutoSMS & am fine with it.
- emailed certain people, mostly family, to let them know what i was doing so they would not be caught off guard.
- disabled text ringtone notifications (which was no biggie since i keep my phone on mute anyway) & my status bar notification.
- removed my texting app from my home screen so i would not be tempted to check it since it has a visual notification on the app icon that i cannot see where to disable.
- commit to not using it!
okay that last one wasn't too hard but i admit, like any addict, i did slip the other night during the BCS game when i texted my brother cuz i knew he would be watching & would not want a call interrupting him. but i have sworn to make that my only text. and you know what? this has been easier than i thought! i actually get tickled that Nacho now calls my work phone if he needs me during the day & we use our Google Chat instead of text. now some may say that's not different, but i say yes because this is Chat via our computer browser No Phone and not Google Talk! i cannot explain it though, it's just so nice not caring about that phone anymore. the amazing thing is, it's bled into other areas that i'd normally use my phone for: blogging, twitter, even email. i'm noticing that i'm starting to use the phone for this 1 UNHEARD OF function......PHONE CALLS! oh skittlefarts! what's happened!
want to see if i'm serious? go ahead! text me!
