Daily liberation from my phone is the new highlight of my life in lockdown

Ihave got a new lockdown vice: I leave my phone at home when I go out for a walk. I know that for some people this will seem unremarkable, or even normal. I have family members who turn their mobiles on strictly to make a call, and then turn them off again because why on earth would they use it in any other way?

But I am not one of those people. I am the person who was nicknamed “boomerang” by one colleague because of my speedy email return rate. I am the person who scrolls Twitter in bed at 4am when insomnia strikes, and who bought a book called How to Break Up With Your Phone more than a year ago, but hasn’t read it yet because, deep down, I know that I’m not ready to end the affair.

I do have limits. I try not to be glued to the phone when I am around my son. But my phone is more or less always somewhere about my personage and, if it’s not, I feel a tad… anxious; the bottom line is that I’m a news junkie and a phone addict. There, I’ve said it. Obviously, it all got worse with lockdown, when our phones became a vital link to the outside world. There is the news, of course, which is as relentless and available as one allows it to be. And, let’s face it, when all of our daily lives are depending on it, the temptation is great to check in to see what has changed overnight or just in the past hour (because knowledge feels like power over a situation that has rendered us all powerless). Then there are the WhatsApp groups, which proliferated overnight, like mushrooms, as various groups from real life relocated themselves into a virtual space. And also the FaceTime and Zoom calls with friends that have replaced meeting up with them.

Like a frog in slowly boiling water, I did not notice how relentless it was all becoming; how overwhelming.

But we’ve all got a rock bottom, and mine was when I realised that I couldn’t make it through an online yoga class without checking my phone several times.

So it started as an intervention on myself. I went out for a long walk and forced myself to leave my phone at home. And instead of compulsively reaching for my phone every few minutes when it buzzed in my pocket, announcing a news headline or a text or an email, I just… enjoyed the walk. I breathed deeply. I felt the sun on my face. I admired the blossom. I chatted to my husband and son. I inhabited the moment and realised how thrillingly subversive it felt to be completely unavailable for an hour or so, and what a blessed relief to just… be. Just for a bit.

And there is no going back now; the feeling of liberation and relief that comes from my window of phone-free time each day is a new highlight.

But please don’t judge me if that is partly because I am looking forward to the little thrill that comes with being reunited with it, and the cluster of alerts that have accumulated in my absence.

I did not notice how relentless it was all becoming; how overwhelming

Victoria Young