Day 2: Reading Cleanse (otherwise known as The Longest Week of My Life) / by vanessa

For starters, I’m going crazy.

Some people have children or pets or other significant relationships, I have a phone.  For at least the last seven years, my phone hasn’t been just some meaningless device for making calls. Before my iPhone I had a Blackberry, and before my Blackberry I had a Razr with texting and voice memos and video and limited internet, and before that? Well that was the beginning of time, folks. Talking on it is something I only do well at two a.m., after several drinks. Hell, I've stopped dating people through text message.  I wouldn’t remember how to dial if it weren’t for voice commands.

These past two days, where my phone has only been used for calls, have been harrowing.  Picture camping for a week in Denali National Park, in February, with only a day pack and zero navigation.  Picture it being very, very cold.  This is worse. 

There have been some fortunate and not-so-fortunate side-effects to this digital starvation diet.  Since I can't read personal email, I've read the hell out of every work email I've received.  Twice.  I'm getting really good at my job.  Also, last night and today I've used the phone for real conversations.  I didn't die.  That was good.  But, on the other hand, I can't bear to bring my iPhone to meetings anymore.  It just depresses me.  The energy I used to spend thirty or so times a day, errr...hour, checking my it has been channeled elsewhere.  Regrettably, in the form of a nervous tic.  You know how amputees report suffering from some sort of phantom limb sensation?  That's how I am with my iPhone.  I keep pressing the home button as if somehow looking at it will telepathically deliver me the email and texts I can't read.  I miss it. I miss you, iPhone.

A food cleanse is nowhere near as hard as a reading moratorium.  Master cleanse?  Please.  In the last 48 hours, I've run the gamut in emotions:  Anger (F this dumb book); Sadness (Break-ups suck);  and Despair (I'll never make it!).  But there's also that little tiny voice that's telling me I'm really gonna be fine and this is good for me.  Or maybe that's just what ALo tells me, who called me today to gloat about my digital Siberia and also to ask that she be removed from my gift-giving list.  To which I eeked out a meager "Np.  Thx for calling.  Ttyl."