I Put My Cell Phone To Bed In Its Crib - Nighty Night, Precious One

Image by author

The other week, I drove my husband and son to the movie theater, pulled into a parking space, excited about seeing Project Hail Mary—first movie in a theater in a long time.

Everyone reached for the car doors as I reached for my wallet, small shoulder bag, phone — oh, noooo!

NO PHONE!!

You’ve got to be kidding!

Nope. Not kidding. I’d left it plugged into the charger at home. If you ever feel naked while fully clothed, it might be because you left your phone at home. Immediately, I recognized my frazzled reaction to my lack of phone and had not one bit of appreciation for this. It was not good that I was so floored about being phoneless.

I tucked that into my back pocket and walked with my family to the theater. Luckily, since I keep a notepad with pencils in my car for taking notes while out and about, I took that with me, because how on earth was I going to weather the boredom of waiting for the movie to start?

We quickly got seated, and I noticed the theater was practically empty. “What’s up with that?” I asked my family. My son knew the answer.

“Mom, there are twenty-plus minutes of ads now before movies. Everyone knows to come well after the start time.”

Twenty minutes??

Turns out it was even longer, thanks to the movie previews. Imagine sitting in front of a huge screen of advertisements with no phone. I know it’s a traumatic thought, and now you know my hardship in that theater that day. Yes, I’m asking for sympathy, compassion, and understanding. It was a difficult moment in my life.

You’re thinking: Is she serious?

I’m trying to say that as preposterously absurd as it is, it’s also, sadly, quite true. So many of us are beholden to our phones.

I’m in my early 60s, so I didn’t get a smartphone until well into my 40s, if I remember correctly. Also, it took me until recently to become hooked on my phone — and every part of me wants to say that I’m not. I don’t go on social media much. I don’t hang out on message apps like Discord or Slack — at least not on my phone. Yet, I can easily scroll through the news, play my puzzles, constantly check emails, peek at the weather — over and over and over.

How many times do I need to do these things in one day?

This is the question I took away from that theater. This, and the pure pleasure I got from drawing a random, detailed flower in my notepad. There are more ways — better ways — to handle idle time than excessive scrolling. For me, drawing could be one. This was the huge breakthrough I made sitting in front of those ads, waiting for Project Hail Mary to start. The phone isn’t my only solution to spending miscellaneous time. To discover this was a gift.

Photo by author 

So, what do you do with a gift? You try to repeat it, expand on it, learn from it — and I did. I wanted to put my phone down more often and walk away — live my life, not dump minute after minute of it into this small tech object that, I’m well aware, steals too many minutes of too many lives out there. There are endless articles on that, and a growing list of research on the effect of the phone on our brains and lives. There is client after client of mine coming with a yearning to unhook from this contraption.

But it’s not easy. Unless you get a baby crib!

Not kidding, and hear me out, and this might not be for you if you’re not a silly girl like me, but it might spur other ideas more suited to the creation of motivation in your brain. Motivation is created. It doesn’t just sit there in the background waiting to fire off on schedule. For me, I like the silly, funny, and absurd. I intuited that linking those qualities to the power of the phone might reduce its authoritarian claim on me and return some self-efficacy.

First, I bought a crib. Not a human baby-sized one, but a miniature crib kids use for their miniature dolls. This could be a funny way to demote my phone to helpless, though endearing, baby status--the farthest thing from a dictator. Of course, as I poked around online for the crib, up popped tangential objects that go with a mini crib. I threw those in my shopping cart, too — a mini frog, cats, some stuffies, a trio of miniature tech equipment, and R2-D2.

I cleared out a spot on the kitchen counter in the far corner and set things up. It looked ridiculous, but was anything more ridiculous than an entire species walking around, faces glued to a small object in their hands? That sounds like a sci-fi apocalypse to me.

So, how do you beat a sci-fi apocalypse? Put it to bed in a baby crib. I did, and guess what?

So far, so good.

Photo by author -- Silly, right?

It took some iterations. It worked well until I realized I needed my phone nearby because I use it to maintain contact with some of my clients. Soon, it was spending more time out of the crib than in it. I assessed the situation. What do I really need my phone for? Turns out, only for access to text messages. Was there a solution? Absolutely. I discovered I could hook my cell’s text messages and phone calls to my laptop. Suddenly, the main function of my phone was taken over by my laptop. Voila! Now I could put the phone to bed entirely except for when I did errands — for phone calls, to research things while shopping, and to use Google Maps.

This was a huge shift. Except for playing online puzzles at night as my celebration of the day, I didn’t need to be near my phone at all. The great gift from the mini crib gods descended. An unmistakable sense of calm settled in. I wish there were a way to emphasize that more. It feels lovely, free, calm, and like I have a weight lifted off me. It’s hard to describe, but I promise you, it’s beautiful in the most silent of ways. The best way I might describe it is that I feel like regular, old me.

Now, when I pass my phone in its bed, surrounded by its friends, I smile inside. It’s happy. I’m happy. The cat in the chair is happy, and so is R2-D2. Everything is as it should be, and I’m so grateful I discovered just how it should be.

---

Hope you're well, friends.