I refuse to be enslaved by my cell phone. [View all]

[MineralMan]

That's why it's powered down a lot of the time. For a while, I kept it on constantly, and was constantly interrupted by calls and texts. I grew to hate my ringtone and the beeping that indicated a text had come in. Another beep told me that I had an incoming email.

Typically, the emails were spammy, the texts inconsequential and the calls were not all that important to me. Sometimes, people even got angry if I did not immediately reply to their text, even if the text just said something like "what up?"

So, I started powering down my phone when I was doing something that needed my full attention, like, say, work. Instant relief. Later, when I wasn't trying to concentrate on my work, I'd turn it back on, listen to my voice mails and look at my texts. If anything was important, I dealt with it then. If the voice mail or text was just a "hey howya doin'" sort of thing, I didn't bother.

A few people commented to me that they had called but the call went to voice mail so they didn't bother leaving a message. A couple of people demanded to know why I didn't text them back immediately.

It finally got through to everyone that my phone was usually off. I stopped getting random texts from bored people and calls that were about nothing. Now, when I turn on my phone to check, the voice mails are worth answering, as are the texts. Email? I don't do email on my phone, really. I take care of that when I'm at my desktop, so I can type in real sentences, complete with proper capitalization and punctuation.

My cell phone works much better now. It's actually a device for communicating now. I like that.