In an inspiring story emerging from Sommerville, MA, 26-year-old Danni Hyland finally went for an entirely phone-free walk, which would have been awesome if she didn’t regret absolutely every second of it.
“I’ve been meaning to go for a phone-free walk for a while now,” Danni told reporters from her living room. “No one told me it was going to be so…boring. Like, literally so boring.”
Sources confirm it took about 0.6 seconds of walking for Danni to realize she’d made a grave mistake and wouldn’t be able to rely on music, a podcast, or a phone call to make the walk the least bit bearable.
“Typically, I listen to music, a podcast, and call my mom at the same time,” she continued. “Kind of a ‘two headphone one microphone’ situation. The silence was so…vast. So empty. I started thinking thoughts I promised myself I would never think again, thoughts like, ‘Should I go to grad school?’ and, ‘I wonder how many murderers I’ve unwittingly passed in my lifetime.’”
Danni tells reporters that she might have turned around if she hadn’t explained the plan to her roommate, ensuring she’d face extreme embarrassment if she’d admitted defeat. Instead, she spent the entire 30-minute walk imagining how much happier she’d be with her phone.
“She’d been talking up this whole ‘phone-free’ walk thing for weeks,” Danni’s roommate, Georgie Klein, told reporters. “I knew she’d hate it. I threw on a disguise and watched her lose her mind for 30 minutes. It was awesome.”
“I was so bored that I started hallucinating,” Danni told reporters. “For example, I saw this mustached man in glasses and a hat who looked exactly like my roommate, Georgie. The lack of stimulus will really do something to your brain. Do not go on a walk without your phone.”
Around minute 15, she started to maladaptive daydream, which was a welcome respite from the silence of an idle mind.
“I imagined an entirely new life for myself,” she told reporters. “Which would have been scary if I were not literally so bored and in need of visual stimulation. In this alternate universe, I’m in a polycule with Jerry Springer! Sick, right?”
At press time, Danni promised herself she would never go for a technology-free walk again. Her screen time now remains untouched at a steady eight hours per day. Mazel tov, Danni!
