I ditched my cell phone plan on May 7 of this year, six and a half months ago.
Since then I went on a two-month-long road trip with Robyn, a 1,200-mile solo motorcycle trip, multiple visits to major cities, and visited friends all over. I don’t miss having cell service at all.
In fact, I don’t think about it at all anymore — it’s completely normalized. Sometimes I’m a little startled when I see people out and about using their phones - oh, right, most people have the internet in their pocket.
The common concern with not having a cell plan is “what about an emergency?” These are my views on that:
If it's someone else's emergency, they should call EMS, not me. If they don't need to call EMS, it's not an emergency, rather it is an urgent inconvenience.
If it's my emergency, then
probably there will be someone else with a phone nearby,
if not, I'm probably outside of cell service anyways so having one wouldn't save me,
not having a phone makes me more aware of the risks and consequences I'm working with, and makes it less likely I'll enter into an emergency situation due to carelessness, and
I accept the risk of living like it's the nasty, brutish, and short existence of the red-in-tooth-and-claw 1990's.
If it's my urgent inconvenience, then it's a great opportunity to apply MacGyver, Stoic, or Buddhist skills to the situation, and either way I’ll likely have a cool story at the end of it. Which is sort of the whole point.
Since ditching my cell plan these are the changes I’ve observed:
I tend to know where I am more. I used to just plug in my destination and follow the blue line. This took almost no thought and I rarely had any idea where I actually was, and I couldn’t repeat the same trip again without navigation. Now, I have to look up my destination and write down directions or draw a map. The effort involved in creating that map means that I also create a mental map of my route. I rarely have to look at the map I make, and I can always repeat the route again.
I prepare more conscientiously. Since I know that if I break down I can’t just call for help, I make sure that I have what I need with me so a simple breakdown doesn’t turn into an emergency. My motorcycle broke down on my way back to California, but I had enough food, water, and layers so that I could have walked for several days to self-rescue if necessary (it wasn’t: I got picked up by a Good Samaritan within an hour. Thanks again, Douglas of Nampa).
My monthly expenses are lower. Duh.
Every once in a while it is mildly annoying for my friends when making plans with them, but all my friends are great (duh) and they at least kinda dig it, so there’s been no conflict. I’m extremely conscientious about making good plans with friends that won’t require mid-flight changes while we’re separated. So far, so good.
I treat the internet as a scarce resource. This brings me trouble when I get to a place with abundant wi-fi, as I tend to get sucked in to the internet more intensely than I used to. While I’m out and about, I have no compulsion to check my phone. But when blanketed in the warm embrace of wi-fi, my compulsion to check all the things is more intense than it was before.
This last point is a problem that I need to fix. I don’t think the answer is to get a cell plan again - the downsides of that are too great. So the only obvious move here is to go all in.
I’m going to revive my intermittent practice of The Lifestyle Sortie and do an Inverse Digital Sabbath.
A Digital Sabbath is no screens for one day a week.
An Inverse Digital Sabbath is no screens for six days a week.