Your Phone Or The Beautiful Cabin In The Woods?

It’s a familiar meme. A beautiful cabin, or a wonderful island, or some other “off grid” location. You can live there for a year, but on one condition. You have to give up your electronics.

Apparently there is some difficulty for some people.

I don’t understand those people.

I understand technology. I’ve been working with it since about 1980 when I wrote my first program and stored it on a cassette tape. Since then, I’ve written code, tested code, written documentation on programs, written and delivered training about programs. I’ve worked for Microsoft, WordPerfect, Novell, and numerous small software companies.

I’ve had a cell phone for nearly as long as cell phones have been a thing. I had one of those brick phones. It was the “on-call” phone. I don’t even remember which company it was for. Today, I have an on-call phone. It’s the same as my cell phone. It is my cell phone. I don’t even bother with a desk phone. It just forwards to my cell phone.

My phone goes everywhere with me. Literally everywhere. It goes with me on vacation. It goes with me to the movies. I attended a high school choir concert tonight. I took my phone. I’ve forgetting my laptop at home and didn’t go back for it. I once got nearly all the way to work, a 40 mile trip and realized I had forgot my phone. I went home to get it.

I live with my phone.

I wish I didn’t.

In fact, at times even when my lovely wife calls, the fact that it’s my phone ringing sets me slightly on edge. (I get over it once I see it’s her.) But, the idea of being tied to my phone is not a pleasant thought.

Don’t misunderstand, I use my phone as much as the next person. I have the MLB app on my phone. I use my phone to surf the web. I have google maps. The only thing I don’t have is games. I spend enough time on my phone, I don’t really need to use it for entertainment.

And given the choice, I’d drop it in the lake.

There are things I’d miss, sure. But, there’s plenty more I wouldn’t. And given a nice cabin in the woods? That would hardly be a hardship.

Rodney M Bliss is an author, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.

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