Digital Downtime Reflection

     My digital downtime started and ended a lot better than I thought it would but it was still a positive experience that showed how much I unnecessarily relied on technology and how much technology I use for stupid purposes every day.
     The first day and the last days were definitely the hardest of the week. Even though I was not to use my phone at school at all I had to take it to school because I had my internship in the afternoon and at work I had to use my cell phone to phone bank and make calls. Resisting the urge to pull out my phone and text someone or even to just check the time when I didn’t know it was really difficult. I kept thinking that maybe there was something that I was missing or someone that wanted to talk to me.  Resisting my phone at school was hard but I was able to get through it, it was at work where I had more problems and also found that I could be so much more productive without distractions. Usually I text in between making phone calls, partly because I am bored but also because I like to stall because phone banking was not my favorite task, but in order to follow my contract I could not text which meant not procrastinating on making calls. I was so much more productive it was crazy. I made probably around double the calls that I made during a usual day, and the productivity didn’t stop there,
      When I got home I went straight to my homework which isn’t usually the case. It was also different because instead of laying in my room doing homework, listening to music like I usually do I decided to sit in our dining room so that I could listen to music on the record player that we have, even though we only had a few records so far. By far my favorite record is the Sam Cooke one which is really old and that my grandmother actually got when she still lived in Korea. While I was listening to the record I realized that it was so different than listening to the same songs on my computer or the phone.
   For one the music seems more alive, the record player gives it more character than just listening to a version on the computer. The music also goes through the whole house so often times my brother would come in and listen to the music with me and we had fun singing and twisting together. Later that day I would also find time to watch television with my parents and would go to bed earlier than usual.
  Throughout digital downtime I also generally felt more relaxed. I think it was partly because I was getting work done quicker and not having to stress about it but also I started to think that my phone in some ways made me more anxious and stressed. With the absence of my phone I wasn’t always waiting for something. For someone to text or call or tag me in a picture. I feel like when you have a phone you always expect for something to be happening and if nothing’s happening than you begin to think that no one cares or wants to talk to you. With a phone and social media there is always the feeling that you should be doing something or talking to someone and without it I definitely felt relaxed.
   I also began to think that having a phone and things that are more instant makes you feel more impatient. When you text someone you expect them to answer right away. I know that when I text someone and they don’t answer after a few minutes I get impatient because I also believe that they are on their phone and just not answering me. Over digital downtime I realized that I like calling someone so much better than texting. In a lot of way texting is in genuine in that a person can carefully construct their response to whatever you say and though it is supposed to be instant it isn’t really. I talked to my friends a lot more over the phone that week mainly my friend who I don’t see during the week, who I usually text a lot and Jasmine as well as some other people. Talking on the house phone also has a much more public feel because anyone could be listening if they choose to pick up on the other line.
     One of the things that happened during digital downtime was that my sister and I took pictures together and when we took them she was saying how she was going to post them on Instagram and Twitter. I had deleted both of my accounts and wanted to share the pictures and started thinking of what people did with their pictures when they didn’t have social media and all the platforms to instantly share and I decided I wanted to start a photo album. Scrapbooking or making photo albums was something that my family used to do a lot when I was younger and I took the time to look through some and though a lot of them were incomplete they were so fun to look at. Seeing how a younger me had decorated a page, what I had chosen to wrote and what my mom added to the page. I began to think about how these photo albums are so much more permanent than anything online, even though they say the internet is forever it’s not like you’re going to be 90 years old, trying to show your grandkids what life was like in your day and say “look me up on my old instagram account.” I really liked the idea of making a photo album so I began to gather up all the pictures I had on my computer and am planning to get them printed so that I can start one. They won’t be as nice as pictures taken on a real camera because most of them have been taken on my phone but it will definitely be better than not having printed copies at all.
      Though I was more productive than I was without technology I did think someday it was hard. I didn’t really miss social media and am not planning on re-downloading them even though so far there have been times when people have referenced things on it and I have been clueless. I did in some ways miss my phone and technology and the ease of it. Sending a text is much easier than making a phone call for example and it also allows you to communicate even when the person isn’t there. I also missed streaming music because even though listening to records and the radio was fun there is a certain ease to just streaming the music that you want to listen to. I also realized that I will always find other ways to procrastinate (Example- One of the days I spent half an hour blowing bubbles in my room which was actually pretty nice). One of the biggest draws I got from this was one of the last days of downtime when I was in Gettysburg with my new teammates. Instead of being on my phone and talking to people I was already friends with I engaged in a lot more conversation and started to form new relationships with my teammates, which was definitely one of the biggest takeaways. The biggest thing I learned through this experience is that while phones and technology is something that can add a lot to our everyday lives and to the ease of our lives we really do miss out on things when we are concentrated on technology whether that be blowing bubbles, hanging out with your brother, or creating connections with new people.