Day 1

This media blackout is not as bad as I thought it was going to be, of course I am struggling a bit with using my cell phone. When I first woke up Saturday morning I immediately grabbed my phone to check the time and then see that I had some missed text messages. I than remembered about this project and did not text back and basically had to hide my phone out of sight from myself so that I would not be tempted to text or call anyone.

Going without TV was not a struggle for me because I rarely have time to sit down and just skim through channels, I am always out of my house so that deprivation was a piece of cake Saturday. I thought maybe music in my car would be hard to deprive myself of but it was almost fun. My dad is a musician so I am constantly around music and when I was without music in my car I found myself thinking a lot about what I am doing, going to do and want to do with my day. I also realized that I don’t have that many songs that I know all the lyrics to by heart. It’s harder to remember the first lines of a song when the beat is not playing. But not having music in my car for my drives was surprisingly easy and fun for me. I just had to learn to get past immediately turning on the radio the minute my car starts.

I had work more than half my day Saturday which made this project a lot easier to get by, but what I did realize was that I rely on my cell phone more than I should. I found myself wondering questions like “What stores have good sales?” “When is the new Toy Story coming out?” and “What’s the temperature every hour this day?”…. it was hard not being able to pull out my phone and use its internet or my weather channel application on my phone. I realized that for any question I have I always go to the internet to solve and when not being able to the questions I have slowly in the day just become unimportant and I forget why I “needed” to know them.

I had no problem going into this project; I didn’t think that my cell phone was that important to me. Even though some days I leave my phone at home without worrying, having my phone readily available to me and not using it made it harder. My boyfriend on the other hand hates this project and wants me to text him all the time and takes my want to deprive myself of my phone personal. But we are working on not text so much; we work right next to each other so it is a bit easier to communicate face to face to make plans. Today (Sunday), I will try not to have my phone near me and see how well I can do without my “emergency” text messages, even my mom texts me that dinner or lunch is ready when she is downstairs from me. Much support I’m getting. :[