this relationship may die a natural death
Like a lot of people, I've been almost surgically grafted to my smartphone for years. But in the last two months, my habits have changed so much that this may be the beginning of the end of that relationship.
Since taking the library job, I've rediscovered my preference for print books - and now that I have access to over six million titles through the state's interlibrary loan system, I just don't need to download stuff and read it on my phone the way I once did.
Some of my work documents are still digital-only. I review for Booklist, among other things, and they only send digital galleys these days. But those are PDFs, and I have yet to find anything that makes reading PDFs on a phone a not-annoying experience. So I don't read those on my phone anyway.
Since ditching social media, my attention span has grown back - and it continues to improve. I went from barely surviving 1,500-word articles to actually enjoying 15,000-word articles. Ten or twenty pages of the World Book Encyclopedia now go by without my even noticing (the limiting factor is now the arthritis in my hands rather than my attention span). I can watch entire television shows again without jonesing for The Scroll. It's great.
Since rearranging my online life, I'm writing far more than I ever did before. We're talking an extra 3,000 words a day on average on top of the stuff I write for clients. Typing that much on a phone is a no-go; I want my keyboard.
Similarly, making new webpages or updating my existing ones isn't a thing I can comfortably do on my phone. I could make a text document, I guess, but again - I don't want to type that much with my thumbs. Also, when I want to put a lot of links on a page, I don't want to go back and forth between browser and document on a phone. I want to put them side by side on my proper computer screen(s).
And since leaving the "five websites each sharing screenshots of the other four," I'm doing a lot more stuff online that isn't optimized for phone - or even possible on phone. A lot of the best websites-as-art are nigh unreadable on mobile, for instance. When I'm exploring Neocities or Marginalia for ideas, my phone is not the place for it.
I also recently made a Gemini capsule. Today I learned how to use Lynx to browse the Web from the terminal in Linux. Lynx strips out everything but text, which makes some pages not usable. But Lynx also guarantees zero tracking, since it doesn't even recognize trackers as loadable. So I can read all I want without anyone collecting that data.
I can't use LaGrange (my Gemini browser) or Lynx from my phone at all, though. I have to do both on my home computer.
I do still use my phone for a few essentials, like cashing checks and texting with friends and family. It's still in hand every time I travel. Some things about it are still the most convenient or only way to do things - like handle bus fare.
And I'll always need a Microsoft Authenticator-equipped smartphone for work (gag). Though I did learn the other day that Authenticator will still work even if the phone has no SIM card, as long as the phone has an Internet connection. (A fun fact in case you're trying to put some distance between your Authenticator device and your daily driver phone.)
I've spent years hating how much time I spend on my phone, yet unable to put it down. I have a lot of hope that this may indeed be the beginning of that end.