Dear Reader, please indulge me by closing your eyes and taking a trip to Imaginationland. Picture if you will a land in which there are no smartphones. In fact, there aren’t even any cell phones, let alone ones you can fit in anything smaller than a small backpack. My readers of a certain age may reply to me as such: “Hey, dummy. I don’t have to imagine that. I lived it. It’s called the 1980s and everything before it.” My younger readers may reply, “Hey dummy. Um, smartphones have been around for, like, literally for-EVER!.” Or they’ll just laugh and click onto a more realistic blog. Or the InstaTikTokSnapchatWhatsapps.
Regardless of whatever reaction you had, there was indeed such a day when said items didn’t exist. Let alone when they were not ubiquitous. And notwithstanding the disbelief that millennial may labor under, it was only about a second ago. At least if you’re measuring by the amount of years the Earth has been around.
Smarty pants
On the one hand, smartphones — which I think of just as portable mini-computers — have been one of man’s great inventions. Found yourself RIGHT NOW in a heated and high-stakes debate as to when China’s Tang dynasty ruled? Easy. Take out the phone, do some tappity-tapping, an voila, you have your answer!* Looking for a restaurant that you could have sworn was on 4th and Main but now that you’re at that intersection you realize it isn’t? You could just ask someone nearby. But why bother with basic human interaction! Just whip out the phone and look it up. Found yourself in some faraway place and just realized that it’s grandma’s 100th birthday and that you toootttttally forgot to go to the party that you’ve known about for months? Take out the phone and give her a call.
Back in the Long, Long Ago 1980s, if someone would have told me that small phones that could be carried and used almost everywhere were coming, I’d have thought them crazy. And if someone had told me that there’d be a cyber system that allowed anyone with access to gather bajillions of bits of information at an instant’s notice, I’d have thought them crazier. And if someone told me that not only would these things be available on a pocket-sized, mobile device, and, oh, that it’d have a camera that could take high-quality pictures and hold them in the ether, I’d have quickly backed away. I’d have considered the idea that such a device would be owned by billions of people — from the richest to the poorest countries around the world — the wildest of science fiction stories.
And yet, here we are.
I’m turned on
But here’s, perhaps, the most remarkable thing of all: millions of people (I’m making a wholly uneducated guesstimate here) who have these magic machines at least have mixed emotions about having them. And no small number would just as soon be rid of them altogether.
Why? Because when you can be connected at all times, you’re assumed to be connected at all times. Aye, therein lies the rub. And that rub is a doozy.
It’s one thing if cousin Joey calls you at 7:00 a.m. on a Saturday asking if he can borrow your card table. Annoying, but a minor inconvenience. But it’s quite another when work colleagues/clients/customers/patients/etc. have 24/7 access to you, even if they don’t exercise the ability (too) often.
So, you may, essentially, always be on. While my situation is very far from as extreme as many people for whom the phone is essentially an always-tethered umbilical cord to work, it’s bad enough. The mere possibility that I might be contacted at anytime is enough to make me feel like I’m almost always “on.” Even when I don’t need to be. Or want to be. The separation between work and home hasn’t just been blurred, but essentially rendered something that might optionally be recognized. Or not. This phenomenon is one of my primary reasons for pursuing FIRE.
I was reminded of this last weekend, The Family and I went for a long hike in a fairly remote area. The hike featured long stretches through meadows, where the only sound was birdsong, the tree leaves rustling in the wind, and our feet shuffling on a dirt trail. My thoughts could have roamed anywhere. Anywhere! Why was Einstein’s hair so crazy if he was such a genius? Nuts, I can’t remember who shot J.R. Is the Chinese government looking through Thing One’s (The Elder’s) phone when she’s watching TikToks?
But all I kept thinking about was how I’d love to be able to come to this place anytime I wished, simply lie down and relax for days at a time in this most natural settings, and not even think of anything work-related (let alone have to think of that).
The phone, of course, wouldn’t be on my person. But more importantly, it wouldn’t even be in my thoughts. My connection to the world would be wholly irrelevant for the time being. This, for me, is a driving force for pursuing FIRE.
Dear Reader, you will not be faulted for thinking “Hey, dummy, you can do this anytime you want. It’s called vacation.” Well, yes. Sort of. On the one hand, I could unplug while on vacation and enjoy the peace and quiet I’ve earned. But for me, the thought of coming back to work is at least always in the back of my mind. And too often, it’s in the front. Totally unplugging is hard for me. Again, my wholly unscientific lack of research leads me to believe that I’m not alone in “suffering” from this challenge. And for most of us in the United States, vacation is a relatively short affair and usually has a hard end date.
While I’ve never thought of realizing my FI number as a panacea, nor as the moment when I can, or will want to, RE, I do plan to mark it as the point at which I’ll be able to make a shift. Mentally and work-wise. Time will tell if that happens. But I’m intending to shift from my current office-like-based** job to work that will allow me to completely shut off once my tasks are done. Or, better yet, to shut off completely at my leisure. The smartphone will then, I hope, be just a “smartphone.”
Dear Reader, I hope that you don’t suffer the same phone-related angst that I do. And regardless, I hope you’re not one of those who are so phone-obsessed as to be oblivious to everything else.
** I work from home, tho it’s an office setting in all but name
I hate to tell you this but as one who pulled the early retirement trigger five years ago it makes little difference as far as the phone thing goes. If you have kids then as they go to college or move out you are going to be available to them 24/7, there is no other option. And a call from a kid with trouble is far worse than any call from work. If you volunteer or work for fun there will be emergencies where you’ll be contacted at odd hours. If you have aging parents you may get horrific calls in the middle of the night because of a bad fall or stroke. Life simply will not let you responsibly unplug from your truly important commitments. They never were work related. Without a full time job you do get less intrusions. But when your phone rings in the middle of the night your heart still skips a beat.
All true, and good points. But I already have much of that. There’s material differences too: (1) The calls you mention all are possible, and I sometimes get them, and they’re almost always at unexpected times. But they’re much rarer (even if the substance of the call may be much more important if it involves family); (2) This may be personal, but the actual sensation that I feel re work calls is both omnipresent and the producer of a constant low-level angst (and sometimes high-level). While I’m always “on” for Things One and Two (and, I suppose, other family and friends), that’s always the case. The fact that they can reach me by phone 24/7, for me, doesn’t make any difference for my level of “on-ness.”