8 Days without a smartphone

Nine Days ago I would have never given a second thought to leaving my bed without my Galaxy S7 Edge. It refused to charge one morning and I gave it 2 days to maybe come back to life. That is how ridiculously much I believed in the smartphone. Finally, I gave up the 3rd day and called in for a replacement on a phone that I still have payments on for an extra $199. That is quite the monopoly that you have on us individual blue collar consumers Android. Bravo to you, Fuckers.
This is for those lucky enough to have a properly working cellular that does not need replacing 4 times in a week until actually working for a solid thirteen months. After which it mysteriously burns out and costing me 2 extra Benjamin's.

Let me share my freedom.

Days 1-3: My brain was rebooting, I was in denial that I had an addiction to consuming internet content rather than creating it. I was missing the daily hilarious memes which my 20-year-old son posts constantly. Now that we are on that, who makes those useless but entertaining memes? Is it the private school kid with nothing better to do because she always finishes her prep school work ahead of time? Doubt it. I like to imagine that it is that welfare kid whose mother doesn't have any more food stamps by the 3rd week of the month and the kid is making these clever meme's to distract themselves from the reality of his ghetto ass life. Moving on.

Day 4: I am my own worst critic. I've been told this before. It's true. I was used to waking up at 4 or 5 A.M. but not without my lovely little platinum silver screen. My personal Vision became clearer without it this fourth morning. I also realized I have zero will power. I honestly wouldn't leave the phone in another room at night if I still had it in working condition. It was clearly good for me to be without access to the interwebs, I knew I was completely delusional with the fact that I was not a creator of content but a consumer of such. What a scab right? At this point of realization, I was still lying in bed mind you. I got up and made a plan to clean the house, take the kid for ice cream with her cousin and maybe write a plan of action. The only thing that actually happened on this day was the ice cream and cousin. Don't judge me, remember I'm a recovering smartphone addict.

Day 5: I actually asked for help! I logged onto my other addiction, Facebook and asked for help. I wanted to build a website but I always doubted my ability to do so. Terrible time-consuming mistake. Within just a few minutes of posting the only person who actually gets my sick dark humor answers with Wix! I built a website in about 3.5 hours. It at this point is up and running but there are only 2 items for sale and no POS link. That stands for Point Of Sale not Piece Of Shit. In later pieces, this acronym may change. The beauty of this day is, I created content and hardly consumed any.

Day 6: I started building My Gwich'in-Tlingit inspired moccasins earlier by about 4 hours. 4 Hours! That is the amount of time that I have been wasting on my phone. I was lazy. I know the time needed for a start up business. and I was wasting a quarter of the work day on a phone that distracts me for an embarrassing amount of time. So, I built a pair of shoes by 10 A.M.

My girl kid was fed, dishes done. I stood there reviewing all of the avenues of social media and content that I put out for selling my slippers. I was missing one thing. Real Life Advertising! How could I have missed this? It crossed my mind a few months ago that I should make actual flyers for brick and mortar businesses. But that quickly subsided when the "cash me ousside" girl memes blew up. Today, day six I actually left the house to work. I built flyers and to my surprise, I was so wrong about the businesses. I didn't think they would be open to my flyers. Everyone that I approached was so kind. I did not even think of my missing link to the internet anymore. My phone was out of site and out of mind. I was a free bird.

Day 7: My tracking number read that my replacement phone would be in today, Saturday. Of course, I thought the Post Office would be open all day like most others in the real world. Wrong again, it was open for 2 hours. I was 3 hours late. I didn't care. I was creating things 2 maybe 3 times as fast as I would've been with that little prison sentence of a smartphone. My connection to the world wide web is no longer an issue. I am enjoying this time away from everything that I thought was life, Immensely.

Day 8: I wrote it all down. This was written and brought to you by the lack of technology. I can actually be relieved that I have a different view to the outside world. Kind of as it was before smartphone's and instant access. I really enjoyed the experience. If you want to reboot and get creative, be lucky enough that your phone breaks for an extra couple of hundred bucks or just set it down for at least seven days.

In eight days, I started a website, Built and introduced a hard copy flyer to at least six local businesses, I began working 4 hours earlier in the day and completely forgot about the instant gratification of having a Smartphone. You can see more slippers at fb.me/sakarisfur or #sakarisfur or https://hopelorena.wixsite.com/sakarisfur

Please leave your thoughts about this piece after you share it to your social media outlet of choice. I've been told it's an utter waste of time to try and leave a comment below(I'm troubleshooting this issue.) Thank you and I am very interested in your feedback. Yours truly, Hope In Alaska.