Deciding what to think myself

Last weekend we were on vacation in a cabin somewhere in the woods, which was already nice and calming by itself (well, aside from the storm, power outage and flat tire…). But what was even more relaxing was the fact that we had too little 3G reception to be able to access the internet. Before I had a smartphone I said that I never wanted a smartphone because it would mean that I would be able to check my email at any given moment.  A couple of my worst vacation memories are the times when we decided to quickly check our email after more than a week of being on a tropical beach only to find out that a paper was rejected. I felt that I didn’t want to be connected to the internet the entire time.

But that was three years ago, before I bought an iPhone that I am as attached to as I am to BlueEyes. So now I check my email when I’m making breakfast, I read twitter when I’m pumping milk and I read blogs when I’m nursing BlueEyes at night (only after he has fallen asleep, because otherwise he constantly wants to see what I’m doing with my phone). The only thing Dr. BrownEyes and I have agreed not to do is to check our phones when we’re eating dinner.

And whenever I read anarticle saying that smartphones cause stress I thought that that didn’t apply to me. That I could just check my email but then not worry about it and go on with my day. But being without internet this weekend made me realize that it’s pretty refreshing to not be able to check your email or your twitter stream. That it’s pretty peaceful to decide what to think by yourself and not have your thoughts guided by emails, tweets or facebook posts coming in. 

However, because of the storm and subsequent power outage we got moved to another (much bigger and nicer cabin) that had wireless internet. And even though I had realized how nice and quiet it was without internet, I couldn’t help but relapse into checking my email and twittering about the fact that we had power and internet again.

What about you? Do you feel more relaxed without access to internet? And are you compulsively checking your phone the whole day?