Fall has come to the little law office on the prairie and as the veil between the worlds briefly thins, it is a time to reconnect with our ancestors and time to review the old cell phone plan. Once again I trudge to the local cell phone service and walk past the shiny new smartphones and over to that dark corner of the store where the just plain phones sit.
I will admit to having a somewhat perverse sense of amusement upon seeing the sales persons face when I ask for a cell phone that just makes phone calls — no texts, no web, no smarts. The look begins with an expression of complete incomprehension – I’m never sure if it is because they can’t understand why I would want such a thing or if it is because they can’t believe such a device actually exists – an ends with complete shock as it dawns on them that I am seriously interested in a piece of technology generally reserved for someone’s elderly maiden aunt.
So, why don’t I carry a smartphone? Reason one: I’m cheap and dumb phone, iPad and MIFI (I like Karma) gets me all the smart & connected I need for less than the cost of a smartphone plan. It helps that I don’t mind being disconnected from the demands of electronic communication on occasion A benefit of being out where cell phone service can have holes you can measure in terms of minutes is that you learn that it is not all that important to answer an e-mail or voicemail within seconds of receiving it – what is important is that you do return them.
Reason two is that my dumb phone goes a week on a charge. This means that rather than weighting my briefcase down with an array chargers, adapters and cables, I can weight it down with the important stuff like chocolate, coffee, and the occasional client file.
Finally, I think being less connected electronically means that when I meet with people, I’m there with them; the office stays in the office. I guess that I’ve reached that stage in life where multi-tasking takes a back seat to being there and building relationships (plus there has to be some sort of health benefit from not continuously squinting at tiny screens).
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