Jaime Unplugged

How I survived twenty minutes without my phone this morning

This morning, I woke up after another fitful sleep with my phone next to me because I’ve been scrolling at 1, 2, 3:00 AM again. My battery was at 16% so I put it on the charger left it upstairs in my room. I went downstairs, made coffee, and sat at my dining room table without my phone.

I hate to admit how lost that made me feel, like I was missing an appendage, but this is just between us, ok?

I picked up an outdated magazine that I had in a stack on my table as a result from going through some of the nooks and crannies of my house to start the long six-month migration from my house into my fiancé‘s, where I will move in September. It was a Bon Appétit from 2020, in the thick of the pandemic, and it was full of news about restaurants closing and how the industry needed to adapt from dine-in to take-out. It brought me back to that time where we all wished we could gather together, but we were isolated in our own homes wrapped up in masks and fear and solitude. That time wasn’t a horror movie for me per se because the lock down gave me a much-needed time to take a breath and pause after the trauma of my marital separation and after some excruciating career experiences. But I remember vividly that weird distance from a life of normalcy being in a crowded restaurant.

I’m a strange mix of introvert and extrovert, I draw my energy from people, but I also need my quiet time, my alone time, to remember who I am and to understand what I think about things and how I feel. The magazine kick started an old yearning of mine, a fantasy of hosting regular dinner parties like Maya Angelou and Christopher Hitchens did. It would be a mix of friends, and we would spar about politics and intellectual things, and my table would be set beautifully, and my food, delicious. I decided I would put that on my vision board, and I will make that happen in the new house.

Anxiety about my workday bubbled up as it usually does, but this time I didn’t have my phone in my hand to scroll or Candy Crush rows to distract. I breathe in and out and try to meditate for a minute or two without the aid of earbuds and a guided voice. I had an idea of a newsletter that I want to start. And I took a notebook and a pen, which felt very old school to me, and I wrote down idea after idea after idea. I have an outline now and a pretty strong place to start. I feel kind of purposeful. I’m even writing a blog after a too-long hiatus.

I picked up my phone before I left. My phone was at 56%, but now I have a full battery.