User:Wordfa/Elimination Diet

# No Phone

#### Intro

I'm addicted to my phone. Not as bad as some but way more than I want to be. I don't scroll reels endlessly, but I do fall asleep every night to youtube videos ([mainly old men doing metal machining](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia3Iieejyg8)) and wake up every morning to browse two horrible websites (Reddit and The Guardian). I don't feel the urge to photograph my life, but I walk around constantly with headphones in listening to podcasts and scroll marktplatz while I shit. The worst symptom I have developed is subconsciously double tapping my phone screen, sometimes even just phone screen like objects, to check for any new notifications. All to say I feel an absence when not in the company of my phone. Worse, I don't know if I could give up my phone, every though every identity building part of my body wants me to.

So I've hatched a plan to give my phone up for a week (well 5 days) while I go travelling with my girlfriend (Fra). This wiki page will be a journal of that.

#### Part 1 – Preparation

I have just started writing and have discovered an issue. I won't be able to update this wiki page because I won't have a phone (or laptop) to do so. No problem I'll take a notebook and write down thoughts, that I can compile here later on. Easy.

My thoughts going into this was it should be easy and better still kinda romantic. Romantic because I'm going away with Fra but also romantic because isn't getting lost and trying new stuff what holidays are about. I don't need to take pics, I don't need youtube to fall asleep to, I don't need to distract myself while walking. Just us, a van and Algarve.

Step one in this obviously naive plan is that we got a map and met at a pub to copy down all the places we want to visit and stay. Quickly a difficulty emerged, circling a town you want to visit; very easy. Marking down a small parking area on a tiny chicken path where we can wild camp on a '1cm = 3km' map; very difficult and possibly useless. Instantly I was imagining it being 7pm, the light is fading, and we are trying to work out if this is someone's driveway or a track to a secluded lakeside spot. Maybe this wouldn't be a problem if you are happy to just pull up anywhere, but I am terrified of being told off, especially when I feel like a privileged tourist and speak no Portuguese. Fines are one thing, a local or a policeman shouting at me, petrifying.

Also, another thought emerged, are we not just preloading the phone use before the trip. Like we are still using camping apps, Google Maps and travel websites in order to mark a map, so I can feel I'm travelling without technology.  

Fra, I should note, will not be giving up her phone and very quickly said that 'we might have to use it'. So our new plan is we only use the phone for directions or recommendations as a last resort. What will be the criteria of a last resort is still up for debate. But it does raise another problem with this experiment. The fact that in some ways I am switching my reliance on technology to a reliance on Fra. Not only does she luckily speak Portuguese, see ya DeepL, but she is also very outgoing and won't haste to ask locals things, something again that terrifies my always slightly embarrassed self. Lastly so much of my phone use is linked to solitude and with her, I won't be.

There was a moment when we were looking at how to get from the Airport to the train station, and we realised the buses were very tight. Fra quickly said we can get an Uber, an app that I haven't used for political reasons since 2017, and I didn't know what to say. To say OK and take an Uber feels like I'm side stepping my own beliefs, to say no would feel like I'm being at best obtuse and at worse passing judgement. If your vegetarian and someone is like 'I'm throwing out this stake, do want some?' Do you say no? Or is it more like you go home for Christmas and your mum spent ages making a beautiful turkey, and you refuse to eat it? I don't know, because both these examples do inconvenience your loved ones for your own moral beliefs, which of course you should respect but to what extent. When it comes to matters of rejecting technology, how much should we inconvenience our loved ones?

Namely, our mothers when it is our birthday during the trip, and now you realise you are probably going to have to call her. Maybe I can use Fra's phone.

***

My preparation continued today as it dawned on me that no phone means no watch. This paired with the fact that trying to meet up with someone without a phone, requires a certain amount of planning, which in turn demanded a sense of time. So I went out to the delightful Zuidplein mall to find a cheap watch. It turns out finding a simple cheap watch is very hard and after contemplating buying an overpriced Casio hipster watch, I decided I would try without. Maybe I could look at the sun or something or hope for lots of local pharmacies to keep me honest.

I also decided to front load some more phone usage by compiling a bunch of PDFs to print before my departure. Namely, boarding passes, rental info, hostel confirmations and the occasional Google map. Like most people my age, I don't own a printer and it being Sunday I couldn't print at Uni. So I went to a copy shop and had quickly spent staggering 4 EURO, for 8 pages of B&W printing. With overpriced print-outs in hand and a decidedly vacant wrist, the reality of the situation I was choosing to put myself, and others, in was dawning on me. As a homebody, Holidays already make me nervous. Was I now also giving up a sense comfort, ease, and safety for a romantic dogma of how life should be?

In my last act of preparation, I alerted my family to the fact I was going offline but compromised to ring them on my Birthday. I wonder If I will be able to only use my phone for that purpose or will the allure of 3 days unread notifications suck me in.