On touching grass.

I recently posted about not taking my iPhone with me on vacation—

—and basically this ended up being unfeasible. My husband wanted me to give him driving directions, I needed to coordinate things (so many things) back home with my kid's school and for her birthday party, and there was an entire afternoon where nobody would talk to me because they were taking a nap or doing something else so what choice did I have but shitpost to pass the time!

It's that last instance where it would have been preferable to perhaps find something else to do with my time, to be made to do something different with my time—that's the whole point in not taking the iPhone!!—but the former circumstances make me wonder if it is even feasible for me to ever give up a smartphone. Maybe the dumbphone is something I ought to give up. Certainly carrying another phone isn't minimizing.

On the other hand it is nice to have my phone separate from my iPhone though, which really is (as I think we all realize by now) a handheld computer more than anything else.

Did taking and using my phone impede the vacation otherwise? Not really, I am glad to report. There was a sauna on site and I was able to use it twice, with the kids underfoot! A miracle. I finished a book I did not like. I took a number of film photos that I will hopefully get developed pretty soon! I got a lot of sleep every night and moisturized constantly so I'm looking pretty okay. I decided it's time to get back on the diet and fitness train.

I feel stuck at a fork in the road where on one hand I just give up technology, or a lot of it, and focus on my analog hobbies and I don't know, baking bread for my kids or something. The other fork is still spending a lot of time with technology but avoiding big tech. I'm constantly torn by the paradox that avoiding big tech products requires so much more attention, time, and occasionally even money and more knowledge of how technology functions in fact. If you just spend a lot of time posting on Instagram that's actually free and easy and your real life friends will even remember to talk to you a bit more often as a bonus. You don't have to think about it. I am thinking about it all the time.