I have decided... Strawberry Jam is better than Merriweather Post Pavilion!!!

On January 23, 2010 I turned off my cell phone for a day. Usually my cell phone is a part of me like most teenagers, but I don’t think my obsession is as severe as some other people who attempted this experiment.

When I woke up, remembering about the assignment, I checked the time, if I had texts or calls then I turned off my phone. As a personal social experiment of mine a few months back, I turned my phone off for a full week to see how many texts or calls I would receive. The answer that I found was 2. But this assignment was different for me for some reason.

Throughout the day I had gone to reach for the phone to text someone just to realize that I didn’t have it powered on. I was tempted more than once to turn it on, just to check for texts but I didn’t. I knew I would be angry with myself if I did.

After I had breakfast I watched television, listened to music, and went on the computer. But after lunch is when I started to get antsy. When I logged into YouTube I saw some videos that I thought my friend would enjoy. I didn’t have his email and, unfortunately, no one Instant Messages anymore. I couldn’t do anything to satisfy my need to contact him. This was when I experienced a new feeling that with my 15 years on the earth I have never experienced. The feeling of being cut off of technology. I had mixed emotions about this. I was sad because my friend couldn’t talk with me but I also experienced a sense of happiness and pride because I understood the point of the assignment. That was the time where I understood what I was doing and why I was doing it.

After my YouTube crisis I had pizza for dinner. After my meal was done I went upstairs to go into my room and to go on the computer by that time it was 10 o’ clock. I turned on my phone to find 1 phone call and a text. The first was my grandmother at 4:30 PM “just to see how I was doin’.” The second, a text from a friend wondering If I wanted to hang out.

Turning on your cell phone after you haven’t deliberately ignored it for a day and finding out that you weren’t missing much gave me another odd feeling, a feeling I didn’t expect to get from this assignment. The feeling of disappointment. The feeling of anticipating a tsunami of emails, pictures, texts, calls, and voicemails and in reality only getting a bucket of water. This showed me that there isn’t that much that we need to immediately know. If I could take one thing from this assignment it would be that now I will truly think before I text. Is this information valuable to the receiver? If this same person texted me the same text would I respond? These are just some of the questions I asked myself.

The most powerful feeling I have experienced in a long time was trying to grasp the idea that I had no way to contact my friend this one stupid video. The reality was, he was going to open the email or IM or text and either hate it or not even open it in the first place. It was difficult for me to tell myself that there was no way to beat the system. I juts had to face it. I have always been connected in some way to a bigger network. Be it the television, the Internet, or a 3G Network I have always been able to let other people know what I wanted to tell them or show them and accepting for one day that I was declined that privilege was hard for me.

When I heard about this assignment I thought that I would have trouble with my obsession. I was right.

"Allow me to retort" - Sammy Jax