If somebody told you that you couldn’t use your phone for 24 hours, would you panic?

Approximately one week ago, my Samsung Galaxy S3 decided that it wanted to start making my life difficult. In what was a rollercoaster five days, I went through three factory resets (which bought me just over a day each time) before the phone eventually drew its last breath a couple of days ago.

The result was that I had to spend the following 24 hours phoneless. This is my story.

Morning

Woke up with absolutely no concept of time.

Forced to skip the usual morning ritual of checking notifications and email, and the customary scroll through Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram (Twitter if I’m awake super early) feeds. Was acutely aware that pretty much anything could have happened during the night and I would have been none-the-wiser.

Faced a big challenge after getting into the elevator to leave the apartment. 73 floors down looking at everyone else with their phones was unpleasant, simply staring at them in the hope that one of them would give me a go off their technology proved fruitless however.

Stopped in traffic on the way to the office and the hand instinctively went for the phone several times, ended up playing with the handbrake instead.

Parked the car and realised my first genuine dilemma of the day, no phone to pay for parking via SMS. Contemplated using the machine, but anyone who has ever driven in Dubai will know that I would have had a better chance of making a new phone from scratch than I would have of sourcing 22 single Dirham coins. Ended up putting my sim-card in a colleagues phone to get it done. Hassle.

Afternoon

Grabbed my lunch to go from Joga in Media City (average, to be honest) and after putting in the order, I was told it would take about five minutes. I stood there twiddling my thumbs with my mouth open for what felt like five hours just waiting, thinking about how bad previous generations must have had it.

Went to the bank after lunch to finally set up a bank account after nearly six months in Dubai. A rookie mistake, in retrospect, as I should have known that there would be substantial waiting time associated with creating a new account. Took my ticket anyway, and saw that the estimated waiting time would be about twenty minutes. I was actually out in a sweat, like a heroin addict coming down off the gear scratching at his face.

Evening

Traffic was slow on the way back from the office, déjà vu from the morning except I found a little stress ball in the glove compartment and started bouncing that off the windshield to pass the time.

Began to wonder, as the evening progressed, about the conversations in various WhatsApp groups that were probably on-going in my absence. Also, what if someone was messaging me asking something? At least with email I can receive it on my laptop, but WhatsApp is phone only. They wouldn’t have known that I was going through a day that only Jack Bauer could match, and there was no way I was going to post the generic ‘I’ve no phone’ status on Facebook.

Faced with a number of problems when bed time arrived. For starters, I had no alarm because, well, who has actual alarm clocks these days. Then, after turning off the lights, I felt a strange unease over not being able to have one last quick sconce at what was going on online before making the decision that the day was officially over. Similar to the morning ritual of scrolling the feeds, the pre-sleep scroll is essential as it cuts down on the following mornings work.

Don’t know if I am alone with this one or not, but the one of the biggest problems I faced all day was actually after I had made the conscious decision that it was time for sleep. An overwhelming sense of impending doom came upon me thinking that if I were to wake up at a strange time, I wouldn’t know whether it was morning or not. Without being able to quickly glance at the phone and see that it was only 4am, and successfully get back to sleep before actually waking up, was a major concern. If this happened, I was going to have to turn on a light and look at my watch on the nightstand, which would be the equivalent of getting up and running 10km in terms of being able to get back to sleep after it. The thought of this actually kept me awake for about half an hour.

Moral Of The Story

I didn't see myself as one of those people who are an extension of their phone, and I'm not, however, I am more reliant on it than I could ever have imagined. People will say that this is a bad thing, and some will tell you that the world was a better place without all of the technology that occupies our lives today.

These people are idiots.

What Do You Think?

Can you relate to any of the above? Ever been faced with a similar situation?

About The Author

Barry Moroney is employed as Digital Content & Marketing Executive at biz-group in Dubai, UAE. He is passionate about social media, video and content marketing, and writes a marketing blog on his website at barrymoroney.com. All is now well with Barry following the purchase of a new Samsung Galaxy S5.