GENERAL WRITING

In the middle of last night, I woke up, for no real reason, like I often do, and instantly did what I also often do: checked my iPhone, which I keep beside me because I always like to know that my daughter, who lives in Boston, is okay.

She was fine. A text message on my home screen confirmed that. I sort of drifted into MAIL where the important announcement awaited me that some Australian Twitter account called School Supplies was  following me.

Moving on to Facebook, I  saw that my friend Susan Conley had posted a new blog post called “My Smartphone Future.”

Uh-oh, I thought. I knew what was coming.

I, too, had just read the New York Times article she cites, about smartphones and our increasingly distracted brains, and the people (writers!) who’ve weaned themselves off of their smartphones, and are now more focused and free.

I confess I’ve become worried about my tendency to have my smartphone constantly in my hand, and the Times article had made me start to think about the habit in much the same way that I had thought about quitting smoking before I finally did at age 24.

My real dismay came from hearing that Susan thought she had a problem. Recently, after staying at her house, I came downstairs first, and marveled to see her iPhone in the kitchen, lying on the desk, where she’d tossed it after dinner. I never imagined her checking messages while stirring sauces or walking the dog, as she confesses. If she thought she had a problem, what did that make me? Some sad nocturnal Pavlovian rat,  knocking the lever in the darkest hours of the night? With shame, I turned the phone off.

But by morning, my unconscious had sorted out how I really felt: I don’t WANT to live without my iPhone. Before smartphones, the thrill off the day was checking email. Before email, it was checking the answering machine, or going to the mailbox. I’m someone who needs to look forward—to parties, to dinners out, to vacations, and to the small daily pleasures that the smartphone does not fail to provide. If I’d lived in the 1930s, like my main character in Cascade, I’m quite sure I would have thrilled to the loud jangle of the box telephone, would have eagerly awaited the twice daily mail service.

And if I give up my iPhone, there’s no going back. Trips to the mailbox these days involves leafing through stacks of nothing and dropping it all straight into the recycling bin.

No, I’m not going to give up my phone. It allows me to travel freely, without a computer; it provides maps and music and weather reports and news. It’s a handy little palmful of magic.

The key, I think, is to muster up some old-fashioned discipline. I already turn off the phone and all internet service when I write. Why not take that discipline a step further? On my list for today: create some new guidelines for myself.

I feel better already.

Susan’s blog post: My Smartphone Future

The New York Times piece: A Hardy Group Holds Out on Smartphones

A treasure from the Rare Books room at the Boston Public Library: A book John Adams owned as a child, and which is full of his doodles. He was a lifelong book annotator. Me too! I find it hard to read without a pen in my hand.

I happened upon this exhibit at the National Heritage Museum a few years ago. The theme of the show was “REMEMBER ME,” and displayed random personal artifacts that had been kept, cherished, passed down: war medals, a child’s 1869 diary, a small, worn baseball glove, a Belgian handkerchief a WW1 soldier brought home to his sweetheart. The pocket calendar carried by a new husband on his 1920s honeymoon to Niagara Falls.

My imagination was caught by how what we own and what we decide to keep tells so much about us. It made me wonder which possession I would choose, out of all the objects in my home, to say “me” after I am gone, and inspired the new novel I am writing.