This morning I tried to activate my new phone, but it didn’t work when I tried to follow Verizon’s instructions on their website, so I called and got help from a very nice and knowledgeable woman who activated it with little to no difficulty.
I am nervously excited.
In a nostalgic moment, I was excited to text with the old key pad, but that excitement quickly wore off when I realized how labor intensive texting like that can be. I figure this will just force me to call people more frequently, since I won’t want to type out long messages one letter (up to four clicks) at a time. Here’s a quick “I’m sorry” to all of those people who, like me, hate to talk on the phone because texting is so much easier.
I can already feel the need for nearly constant digital contact with people kind of sliding away, which is the goal of this whole thing anyway, but I didn’t figure it would happen so quickly. Before when I have quit social media, I got sucked back in pretty quickly, but social media is more labor intensive on a computer than a smart device, so I may have saved myself that temptation this round.
At any rate, I am looking forward to spending my time reading, running, writing, and even watching TV or movies, instead of scrolling. I am really focusing on just doing one thing at a time and giving that one thing my undivided attention. Right now, I am writing. The TV is off, the phone is in my pocket, and I am focused.
I guess my big goal with this is to get back to where I was ten years ago where I can focus, I can remember, and I can relish the time I spend with others. I don’t like my presence with others being split between the screen and the person, and I, personally, haven’t been able to curb that need for digital connectedness without this drastic measure.
Tuesday, January 1 is the real start date, but by then I’ll be five days off of social media and three days on the flippy, so I’ll have a good head start.
I’m ready.
I’m nervously excited.
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This morning as I was reading the News App on my iPhone, before I activated the new phone, I ran across a pretty sweet little journal called Trail and Kale, and apparently they started in 2012 when the founders began trail running as a way to stay fit.
I love their site’s format and the way it’s so easy to navigate. The things you’d most like to read have their own categories, then there is an everything category. For example, when you click on “Interviews,” you can see “Elite Runners” or “All Interviews.”
Of course, nothing a magazine, website, or other forum can do to make things easier to find, helps when I am looking for content that I clearly found in another place. Just before I started writing this, I was thinking about an article about Darbykai (or DK) Standrick in Canadian Trail Running, and I could have sworn it was in Trail and Kale, so I spent half an hour looking for it there.
But, it wasn’t in Trail and Kale, so here I am now, explaining that silliness to you instead of making my point, which is that most elite athletes now have a social media presence. In fact, that’s how I know about most of the amazing trail runners I know about, but Standrick has no social media presence, which is what interested me about her.
Standrick is out there doing her own thing, and kicking ass at it, and not sounding her own horn. Her running philosophy seems to be a good one as well: “Run when you want. Run when you don’t want with the option of going home. Try and go fast sometimes and try not to sweat other times.” I think I may try to implement that approach; run when I want, run when I don’t, lay low, and figure out who I am again. And again. And again.
If there’s a theme to my life, it is figuring out who I am over and over again. Here’s to every day being the best day.
Reason Breeds Insanity 