I ran my phone over with my car.

Some may call it “manifesting”

Back in August, I drove out of a Safeway parking garage and noticed my car’s Bluetooth hadn’t auto-connected to my phone like it usually does. Weird.

I got all the way home and opened my bag to check why my phone wasn’t connected; had the battery died? I saw my headphones sticking out of my bag and thought maybe that’s what it was; I had the headphones on in the store! I pulled on them — nothing attached. No phone in the bag. No phone on the seat, floor. Uh-oh.

When I got back to the garage, my phone was gone. I went up to customer service and asked if anyone might have found a phone and turned it in. I thought I spied a phone with a cracked screen as I walked up, sitting on the counter, but I didn’t look at it when I asked. The person working there asked what kind of phone. I told him, and he slowly handed me an oily, slightly bent phone with a completely shattered screen.

“Oh. That…makes sense,” I said out loud as I took it. “Thanks.” The person looked at me with awkward sympathy.

I got back in my car and it sunk in that my phone was for-good dead. My first reaction was relief.

“Huh, that’s…maybe not good?” I thought, reflecting on how many hours a day I spent voluntarily looking at something I was so deeply relieved not to have.

My next reactions were “damnit now I don’t have a GPS for my plans” and “I need a phone of some kind, I need to work out getting a new one.” I spent the next few hours researching “dumb phones” “not smartphone” “best flip phone?” and other similar search phrases with my laptop. If I felt relieved without a smartphone, maybe I could just be free of them.

I made a list of every aspect of a smartphone I actually value: which apps I need to function in the world without massive inconvenience, what I enjoy, and what just doesn’t hurt. The list was longer than I wanted it to be.

GPS, of course
Laundry payment app for my building
Hm, I need a music player
Oh, and I have smart lights, I want google home I guess
Venmo
Bank, in case I need to transfer money
Calendar
That one game I like…

It just kept going. Okay. So life is kinda exhausting without a smartphone phone. Some aspects of these pocket-computers really do feel like they’ve made life better.

Maybe it’s not that it’s a little computer; maybe it’s that I don’t think of it as a little computer. I thought about this for awhile — what “my phone” has come to mean. It’s the computer that had basically become a part of my body.

I ordered a new phone, but the fastest that could happen was a couple days, and I was, as I mentioned, grateful.

I spent that weekend very quiet. I did have my laptop, but checking everything on it meant being way more aware — I couldn’t half-consciously get up and open my laptop 200 times. I tried out what I would do without scrolling endlessly. The biggest thing that dropped was TikTok. You can technically use it on a computer, but it’s very obvious you’re not meant to.

So, with probably 3 hours of that a day absent, there was a lot of room.

I watched a whole TV series that really impacted me, and it was nice to fill that media space more intentionally. I played jigsaw puzzles online when I felt fidgety. I did a little reading. Generally a lot more happened than is usual in a quiet weekend for me.

My partner also happened to be out of town that weekend, so I was truly alone by default, unless I made plans; which I did, without a phone! I am lucky to live around a lot of places to get a coffee, so I picked an exact time and place to meet friends, and managed to get there and back without catastrophe. People did actually manage to make plans before 2005.

I learned exactly how much scrolling was an escape. I had to go to bed without staring at my screen to convince myself it was okay to let go of the day.

It was a nice weekend! But the number of ways smartphones are either necessary or just make life easier is too long a list for me to actually try to get out of the whole thing.

When I got the phone on Tuesday, I installed things minimally. No social media, except Instagram, which I have curated to truly be just a lot of photos of cakes and rabbits, and doesn’t make me feel bad.

What makes social media feel bad is the constant mental and emotional load of not just content but moods of content. Flipping constantly from joy to rage to sadness to frustration to warmth and round and round is exhausting. It’s not normal to flip emotional states so fast, and for so many different reasons. So Instagram doesn’t make me feel bad, and it got to stay. I started with basics, and slowly added more apps as I recalled why I had installed them in the first place.

It only took me three days to re-install TikTok. But, every time it made me feel bad I closed it.

Every time I started clicking on it to escape my own brain, I stopped and asked what I wanted. Do you want to feel less lonely? Will you, really? I closed the app.

I deleted and reinstalled it several times.

I wanted to write this post then — say how that weekend really changed my relationship to my phone; but I assumed that would probably be speaking too soon. Yeah, of course this feels profound now, you’ve been off your phone for 3 days.

It actually still has felt different, though. I’ve felt relieved the last few times I’ve broken a phone, and I think this time something was actually ready to shift in me.

My “some might call it manifesting” subtitle is supposed to be funny, but it is coming from the sense I was already always willing a way out of how stuck I felt; it was such a profound relief to not be obligated to be “plugged in” that it felt like I must have been working toward that moment for a long time. Being “plugged in” online felt so vital for so long, the idea of leaving that state has been scary, and having it ripped away felt like I could breathe and think.

When I first got a smartphone with real apps, I was so lonely. I’ve been lonely or alone so much of my life. I had long periods of isolation before the pandemic (due to home life or disability), and this last stretch (the early pandemic) was a strange mix of “I can’t believe I’m here again” and “Oh, most people are here this time.”

I go and do things more now (though a little less again, now that it’s extra-virus season). Friends are available. Life does feel like it exists socially. For years, I used social media to never be “alone.” To chase away my fears that if I was ever fully alone, I’d get stuck there forever.

Now I have people, and I have also grown to enjoy being alone sometimes.

Since I broke my phone, I have felt more in control of my life relating to my phone. I consider other options and notice the headache forming if I am flipping through apps too much. If I do get “stuck,” I no longer believe there isn’t a way out. I don’t feel powerless; it feels like a tool and a thing to lean on; whether it’s the healthiest overall is like anything else — it’s okay to lean on the unhealthy thing sometimes, especially if it feels possible to ever not lean on it.

I’ve also started to notice the distinction between “stuck on my phone/TikTok/whatever app” and “stuck in my brain.” So much of the time I thought that TikTok was trapping me, it definitely wasn’t. I was just restless and tired and didn’t feel capable of entertaining myself more actively, or I was already stuck in executive dysfunction and was trying to entertain myself through that period of “stuck,” or I was afraid to go to sleep, etc., etc.

It has been easier to get “unstuck” now that I don’t believe that an app has real power over me. It’s just running along side whatever is getting me stuck in my own brain. I am aware now what questions I can ask myself about what’s keeping me on my phone and what solutions I might have. If I’m afraid to be alone, I need to call someone. If I’m too tired to be active, there might be something more restful than TikTok that’s passive. If I just can’t move, I can focus on how to move, not how to escape the app specifically.

Sometimes that is just noticing that a better option is available, but I’m still going to do this. Or, I can’t think of a better option. Or, actually I’m not even stuck, this scrolling doesn’t feel bad. Sometimes when I open TikTok I’m hoping for some creative inspiration or intellectual stimulus, and when I know what I want, I tend to find it. It’s when I’m desperate for social connection or vague stimulus that it ends up feeling bad. Because that isn’t the tool for that job. And if it feels bad but it’s just the best I can do right now, that doesn’t feel like a trap I’m in eternally — it’s just what’s happening right now.

About a year ago when Twitter (I will always insist on deadnaming massive corporations) started crumbling and people started briefly scattering, I started thinking about how what we call “social media” is one really specific thing, that has been popular for about 20 years now; but that that wasn’t the only iteration of being social on the internet, and it isn’t going to be the final iteration.

The more these places become billboards selling our attention and the less we are interacting with people, the more intensely visible that becomes, we will just find some other way to socialize. Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, whatever, they don’t actually own the concept of socializing; and some of the big ones are already crumbling.

Since I (or someone) ran my old phone over, I stopped making TikToks. I lost all interest in being successful at social media specifically. It no longer feels like the future, it feels like the past.

Since I ran over my old phone, I’ve been finding little spaces for my interests and hobbies. I’ve been noticing when I want social connection and am settling for someone talking at me as an audience member. Asking myself if it would feel a little better to call someone, to close my eyes, to even watch TV instead of using my phone to do things that drain me.

I’ve been playing phone games, and noticing when they feel like they’re trying to get me activated so I can’t put it down — even if I still can put it down, it feels gross to be manipulated, and I find another game.

It’s just been different. The success I’m taking away from that experience isn’t that I stopped using social media, or that every interaction I have with my phone is healthy. I do feel successful, though, because now I understand what it is. It’s not a phone. The phone is an app on it, and it’s the least well functioning app, on mine. It’s a computer we carry around. And it doesn’t have to be part of my body if I don’t want it to be. I can decide how much I stay plugged in culturally to social media. I can engage with social media acknowledging it isn’t really that social; it’s just media now. I can spend unhealthy time on my phone and spend healthy time on it and on other things!

I feel like I am more aware of my body as it relates to my phone, and more aware that I can choose in each moment how I want to relate to it; and that’s a huge lesson for me in general — that I can choose in each moment how I want to relate to my environment, my emotions, my social connections. Even if I feel trapped right now, I can know that another moment will exist later.

So I’m glad that the part of me that wanted my phone smashed into the pavement won for a few days.

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