When you never look up

The first day without my cell phone was the hardest. I couldn't check the time every five seconds. I couldn't immediately fix my boredom, but something else happened. I looked up.
It sounds silly, but think about every teenager you know, think about yourself. You are sitting by yourself, waiting for your friends for a few minutes, what do you do? You pull out your phone and text them to ask if they are on their way. you open Twitter to see if anything interesting is happening. At the very least you check the time to see if they're late, if you're early.
Beyond the obvious barrier of the communication you now feel towards the world around you, it's simple things like this that not having a cell phone in your back pocket eliminates. When you're standing by yourself waiting, you look around instead of looking down, you watch other people and how they act, you look at nature and how beautiful it gets in the spring. I did this very thing the other day, and for some reason it felt like people were looking at me funny.
The other night I went to dinner with some friends around 10pm. The restaurant wasn't packed but there were other tables scattered around the room, each with their own set of people going about their own lives, "interacting" with each other. The three people I was siting with all pulled out their phones. One looked down at their screen, laughed, then showed the other what was funny. My boyfriend, sitting next to me, texted his parents telling them when he'd be home. I sat, feeling a little left out and a little upset. Here I was, eager to have a real, interactive conversation. But I was left sitting alone, staring at the wall, the menu, and the people around me, who were all looking down, eyes lit up white by the light of their cell phones.
I mean I can't blame anyone for doing this because I myself was the same way a week ago. I would pull out my phone every minute there was a chance, but now I see how ridiculous I look. I think about people 20 years ago and how awesome it must have been to sit down with a group of people and be forced to talk, to have real conversations, to learn things about each other, undisturbed. I miss my phone, but I don't think I can ever go back to how I used to use it.

Word count: 423

Unplanned Hiatus

Last week an unfortunate tragedy occurred to me during my afternoon tennis practice. A water bottle tipped over, spilling through my racket case an onto my unsuspecting phone. Unfortunately I didn't catch in until it was too late, 45 minutes after it had been soaking and seeping into every seem and hole, making its way into the deepest insides of my phone. Of course my first reaction was to try to turn it on, which I later learned wasn't the best idea. A blue screen flashed for a second, its last cry for help before it was gone, lost into the realm of dead phones forever.

While this event left me feeling helpless, I managed to find opportunity in the loss. I decided to make it into a kind of unplanned experiment.

If someone where to have told me 2 weeks ago that I could survive easily without my cell phone for over 4 days, I wouldn't have believed them. I rely on my phone for everything, like most other teenagers, and in ways that day by day go unnoticed. 

When I'm sitting in a class reading and I come across a word I don't know, I never hesitate to pull out my cell phone to look it up. It takes 5 seconds and the satisfaction is immediate.

When I arrive to class early, waiting for the lesson to start, I pull out my phone and browse Twitter, Instagram, keeping up with every one's latest news, interesting or not. Most of what I'm looking at is meaningless in the long run, but it keeps me occupied. I never have a second to be bored because I, in a sense, have the world at my finger tips. I can access all types of information, play any kind of virtual game, be in contact with anyone in the world. It's a powerful thing to think about, but no one stops to appreciate it. We have so much and care so little, and I suppose that applies to many things this day in society. But we wouldn't ever notice because we are too busy reading up on someone elses' life, or sending pointless text messages to people sitting right across the room from us. 

Word count: 373

Think

In two days I turn 17. 

Six thousand two hundred and five (or something like that) days on the earth, this earth. This planet that’s filled to the brim with people who break hearts and make hearts. People who smile, and even people who make others smile. People who inspire others to do amazing things and people who show us what mistakes not to make.

I didn’t ask to be put here. (and by here I don’t mean sitting in a bedroom of a two story house, I mean here, in the 21st century where we have cars that can drive 125 miles per hour, and phones that can call people who live 100,000 miles away, but a country that still can’t agree on gay marriage.) I didn’t ask for any of it.

That being said it doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate it. But it does make a person question things. When you really start to think about it, when you start to question you very existence or something as mundane as a birthday, it can really get to your head. How each and every one of us has a different idea of who they want to be, what they think is acceptable, how they think the world should work. People like me start to question if we’re right, if we’re “doing it right”. 

I make decisions every day of where I want to eat, what I wear, how I interact with people, and what I rank as important vs. what is irrelevant, never stopping to question whether or not I’m being ignorant until I am sitting at home by myself, on my computer, trying to decide what to blog about when all I really want to write down is what I’m thinking. And today I was thinking about life, which is a pretty big category which is why I was having so much trouble because one question in my head would lead to another and after a while I would just get tired of trying to figure it all out. But what I did figure out is that it’s hard to have an opinion about things you can’t explain or understand. I want so badly to have an opinion on religion or how matter was created, but thats so impossible because I don’t know nearly enough about either of those things to say I have a solid opinion on what’s right or what’s wrong. And I’m not even sure if that’s right. I mean if I’m curious then shouldn’t I do hours of research to see what other people think and try to take a side or am I better off being ignorant of going along with the majority like most everyone else does. This blog wasn’t really about health or beauty. 

Or maybe it was about both. I think it’s healthy to explore your thoughts and this world is a beautiful place. I rest my case.

Word count: 488