With more demands on my attention than ever, my days were passing me by. On many occasions, I’d look up from my computer or phone screen and find that I’d lost hours – even weeks – to doom scrolling and other pointless online habits. Here’s how I learned to live in the moment by giving up my phone entirely except for when I make sure no one has texted me every five minutes.
When I first decided to start living in the moment, I was tempted to give up my phone completely. I wanted to throw it in the river and say good riddance forever, but then I thought about it for 0.5 seconds and realized that would be a terrible idea. What if someone had an urgent matter to discuss with me? What if someone died? What if someone really wanted me to come to a movie with them? What if a friend was at a coffee shop and I also was somewhat near that coffee shop? What if something crazy happened to the Kardashians? What if they finally found out what Rob’s deal was?
These questions plagued me, much like the Black Plague affected the villagers in the fun new iPhone game I had installed, Black Plague Villagers. I may have lost 1,450 hours to that game, but I only regret 1,445.
For the aforementioned extremely intelligent reasons, I knew I couldn’t forsake my phone completely, so I’ve settled on checking it every 300 seconds to make sure no one has texted me. Now, I’ve got my life back. I can meet up with friends, get out in nature, and even read books in between the five-minute intervals where I check my phone to make sure no one has texted me with a fun update or a spam offer for a low interest mortgage.
When I check my phone and someone has texted me, it’s such a rush. When no one has, I get sad. I will not be interrogating these reactions further, because I’m too busy living in the goddamn moment.
These days, I even sleep with my phone outside my room. Sure, it’s still the last thing I look at before I go to sleep and the first thing I look at in the morning, and I wake up every hour on the hour to make sure I haven’t missed anything, but that’s what being present is all about.
So get your head out of your computer screen and into your phone screen at a regular interval. There’s no time to waste – Sorry, did you hear a buzz? I thought I heard a buzz. Oops, just a phantom one, haha. Wait, did you hear that other buzz just now? A text! I’ve got a text! Get out the good champagne!
