life

Why I’m Deleting Apps and Returning My Phone To Just Being a Phone

~ ChanAtkins ~ 5 Comments

And how I will still maintain an online author presence

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

Do you remember when you got your first mobile phone? I guess everyone does. I was twenty, it was 1998 and my friends had collectively bought me one for my birthday. I hadn’t expressed any longing for one – at that point it was still relatively rare for people to have one – but some of my friends had had phones for a while and they wanted me to join in. It was a nice gift. A chunky little pay-as-you-go Nokia.

It was a novelty to start with. Kind of fun to send a text or get a phone call. They couldn’t connect to the internet and most of us hadn’t even started using the web yet. We had no need to. Those early phones could not take photos either. They had chunky push buttons and you had to pay for cool ring-tones.

We were innocent in our acceptance of them. We had no idea where it would all lead; how much easier it would make our lives, how addicted we would become.

Back then, we didn’t take them everywhere with us. It was still entirely acceptable not to own one. We all still had landlines and still knew the numbers of our loved ones by heart. Twenty-seven years later we are slowly waking up to the fact that our phones, and what we now have on them, are addictive. We are slowly waking up to the fact that giving a smart phone to a child can be extremely detrimental to their mental health.

Ten, twenty years from now, where will we be? Will we see phones and contracts with health warnings on them like we do with alcohol and tobacco? There is a push among some countries, and within many schools and parenting communities to limit the use of smartphones for young people and there is a growing movement of people who want to disconnect from the hold their phone has on them.

And I’m one of them.

I’ve been wanting to do something about it for some time. The way my phone took over my life was slow, insidious. It’s not until you look back and remember how it was that you see how far it has come. I wasn’t interested in mobile phones to start with. Like I said, my friends bought me my first one. I remember my first camera phone. It would have been around 2004 because I recall trying to take photos of my two young daughters with it. Every photo was blurry because they couldn’t sit still.

I’ve never been that impressed by phones. I always had this one friend that got really excited about them and was always upgrading and talking about the next big thing, but I was never in a hurry to upgrade mine. Every phone I’ve ever had I’ve kept until it eventually died. Camera phones were soon all the rage and before long the cameras were actually good. Phones also had torches and calculators on them now.

My friends connected to the internet with their phones years before I did. I was still getting my head around the internet itself back in 2007 when we got our first family laptop.

I didn’t get Facebook until around 2009 and the only reason I did was because a mum at school was telling me about her virtual farm. At the time we were renting a very small house with a very small garden and I didn’t have much room to grow things. A virtual farm sounded fun and it was, so I joined Facebook just to play Farmville!

I soon got lured in by connecting with friends, old and new. I soon started following various pages that connected to my interests. At this point I still had a rubbish camera phone and was using an actual camera connected to the laptop to upload photos.

Fast forward to when my fourth child was born in 2014, and everything had changed. I now had apps on my phone. Facebook and Instagram and my email account. I now had various author pages I needed to update each day. I could buy straight from Amazon using my phone. I could take cute photos of my newborn and upload them instantly to my socials.

I was now addicted to my phone.

I didn’t realise it at first, of course. I took it everywhere with me just like everyone else. It was a source of comfort and safety, peace of mind. Phone boxes have become scarce. No one can remember anyone’s numbers anymore and if you break down in the middle of nowhere you are going to need a phone.

But without me knowing, an addiction had formed.

An addiction that started as soon as I woke up in the morning and the very first thing I did was check my phone. I’d then settle down with my breakfast and check it again, this time answering any messages on Facebook Messenger, text, or WhatsApp. Then I’d check TimeHop. Followed by Facebook and Instagram notifications which inevitably led to me scrolling mindlessly for far too long. I’d break the scrolling to check the news. Not on the TV like the old days – on my phone. Then I’d check my emails. All before getting dressed.

Once I’d got dressed and woke the kids up and completed a few other morning chores, I was right back on my phone again, this time with a coffee on the go. Checking those apps again. Scrolling again. Quite often getting angry or depressed again.

And that’s how the day would carry on. In between work, travel and household chores, I would check my phone. I didn’t even know what I was checking for but it had become such a habit that I didn’t notice it at first. My hand moving towards my phone all the time, almost of its own accord.

If we were watching a TV programme and adverts came on, I’d pick up my phone. If a programme was a bit dull, I’d look at my phone. Waiting in the car to pick my son up from school, I’d check my phone.

In recent years it began to annoy me.

We can all agree that the entire world had gone to shit and who knows how much worse its going to get. Checking my phone now caused me to feel utter despair. Utter helplessness. My phone was making me angry and sad. Looking at my phone was constantly ruining my day.

And then there is how instantly contactable they make you. If you’ve got a few apps on there, anyone can ping you a message or tag you in something at any time, day or night. I would groan at the messages. Groan at the emails. Roll my eyes at the notifications and the things people send you for no reason. I’d constantly sneer at people’s feeds and posts. Constantly feel annoyed by people, by the world, by everything.

Yet I couldn’t stop looking!

Doing something even though you know it is causing you harm? If that’s not addiction, I don’t know what else.

Something had to change. I read The Way Home by Mark Boyle just before Christmas and it tapped into everything that was frustrating me about the modern world. I don’t think my family would let me run away to live in a cabin in the woods with no technology, but reading that book made me long for a more simple life again.

At first I tried not looking at my phone so much. Every time my hand reached for it, I would tune into what I was doing and stop myself. More often than not I would have already opened an app and started scrolling though before I remembered I was trying to wean myself off.

I’d force myself away mid-scroll, but the itch to return was still there. Fear of missing out, I suppose. Plus the ingrained habit of constantly reading and seeing what everyone else is up to at every moment of the day, and me sharing what I’m doing, thinking and feeling. At some point we stopped talking to people in real life and started sharing our private lives across social media.

Social media has become increasingly toxic. It’s not a nice place to be. The majority of these platforms are owned by pretty despicable people with pretty deplorable morals. They can also change the game any time they like. Despite being billionaires, they want you to pay for ads to boost your posts. Visibility for author pages is constantly dwindling unless you can afford to pay. And then there’s AI slop and the enshittification of the entire internet…

I think that’s what did it for me in the end.

I left Twitter and joined Bluesky. I’ve upped my game on Substack, while trying to remain busy on Medium and here on my blog. None of these apps are on my phone.

Next came the culling. I did it when I was feeling angry; when I was thinking about Zuckerberg caving to Trump who thinks right-wingers are unfairly fact-checked on Facebook; when I was thinking about Spotify donating to Trump and being terrible for the music industry, when I was fed up of people messaging me, tagging me, sending me things.

So, I did it. First Facebook Messenger from my phone, followed a few days later by Facebook itself and Spotify. It’s a start.

I thought it would be hard. I thought losing all my playlists would sting. I thought not constantly knowing what’s happening on Facebook would worry me, but in the end it hurt far less than I had anticipated. Snip. Gone.

Now every time I reach for my phone I almost instantly put it back down because there is far less to check or get sucked into. I still have Instagram for the moment. That’s because it’s an author page linked to my Facebook author page, so if I post book related stuff there it will automatically show up on my author page on Facebook without me having to go on Facebook. My plan is to delete both if my followers and engagement on Bluesky and Substack overtake my followers on Facebook.

People can only message me now if they have my phone number! It’s bliss. And I still have plenty of time in the morning and/or evening to ‘check’ Facebook on my laptop, and to post to Substack and Bluesky.

It’s a start! I hope to go further. I’d like to make my phone just a phone again, but it’s not easy when you have books to sell. And it’s not easy weaning yourself off such an entrenched addiction!

My phone no longer has the same hold over me. I can’t doom scroll anymore. I can read the news, or not. I can check Instagram and post book stuff, or not. That’s about it.

It feels good. Like freedom. Like sanity!

I also have a lot more time for other things. Instead of scrolling on my phone, I pick up a book instead or get more writing done. I’ve started planting seeds for the garden and I am slowly redecorating our entire house. I don’t think I’d have time for all this if I was as addicted to my phone as I was…

How about you? Does your phone control your life? Could you live without it? Are there a few apps you could delete? Do you think we are starting to see a backlash against social media platforms?

Spit Out and Churned Out By The Relentless March Of Time, I Keep Trying To Fight Back

~ ChanAtkins ~ 3 Comments

How focusing on moments made Monday mornings a little sweeter..

(Originally posted on Medium)

Image by Bruno from Pixabay

I think our awareness of time really starts when we enter education. I remember sitting in a classroom and staring at the clock willing it to move. When finally it was home time I’d feel elated, but before I knew it, my mother would be saying it was time for bed. And then there was the Sunday night dread… School again tomorrow! Really, already?

Friday night was wonderful. Saturday was great but slightly marred by the knowing that Sunday quickly followed and Sunday kind of sucked because it was the day before Monday. Me and my son were talking about this the other day. He is ten and often expresses sentiments that echo my own relationship with time.

For instance, he often claims that the weekend went too fast, and he is starting to notice that in general, time moves too quickly. He said this about the summer holiday, for example. ‘Today went really quick, this week is over already? It’s nearly time to go back to school!’ His panic echoed my own. It’s not fair, we both wanted to say — slow it all down, please!

I often wish time as we know it had not been invented. We are slaves to the clock and the passing of time whether we like it or not. It’s like a big doom-filled timer hanging over us – reminding you that you are always one step closer to death. Your time is always running out. You are always fighting against time. You always wish you had more of it.

Lack of time causes much stress and resentment. As a writer I never feel I have enough time to write. I always grab what I can and make the most of it but would I like endless time to write? Yes, of course! But life and human made constraints get in the way.

We have invented a world that counts us down in seconds, minutes and hours. We cannot look away. We are glued to it.

As much as I want to ignore time and not be ruled by it I cannot. I have to set an alarm to make sure we get up in time to be ready for the school run. I have to keep an eye on the time when I walk my dogs so that I am back on the laptop in time for Zoom calls. I have to watch the time to know when to pick my son up, when to cook dinner, when it’s time for bed.

Time, time, time. It owns us.

We all want to slow it down, but why? Because of death and not knowing for sure what comes after that. We worry, what if this is the one and only life I get? I’ve got to live it, fill it, appreciate it, make the most of it, but what if I’m not? It panics us. We want to slow it down because ultimately we are not okay with dying.

I resent it and I’m constantly looking for ways to change it only to realise that it’s impossible. Or is it?

Is there a way to slow it down? I’m always wondering this. I have an urge to try an experiment. I want to exist in a timeless weekend. I want to turn off all devices and make sure I cannot check the time at all, not once. I want to eat only when I am hungry and move when I feel restless and write when I feel creative and rest when I am tired. I want to do it and see if it feels faster or slower as I have a sneaking suspicion that watching the clock all the time is one of the things that makes it go faster.

Perhaps loving and enjoying life makes it feel faster. We all know that time slows down when we are bored or unhappy. Those afternoons sat at school watching the clock for the home time bell used to go on forever…

And why is it that as we grow older, time goes even faster? I sometimes feel I exist on a hamster wheel that just keeps me spinning around forever. I get churned out every Monday morning to the start of a new week, then suddenly it’s the end of the day, then suddenly it’s morning again, then suddenly it’s the end of the week.

It’s what everyone says all the time. Doesn’t it go fast? How is it nearly Christmas again? Didn’t the summer fly by?

Is there anything we can do to slow time down or make friends with it?

I think so. And being a writer really helps…

Let’s take Monday morning. No one wants it. No one loves it. It’s a very sad and unloved day of the week, but is it really so bad? Sometimes we have to embrace the unwanted and the unloved and look at it in a different way.

I am trying hard to make friends with Monday. I am trying to give it some love, after all, is Friday really the great fun pal it makes itself out to be? I think not when it all too suddenly spits you into Saturday with Sunday on the horizon!

This Monday morning I woke up in a good mood. Despite recent ups and downs, I surprised myself by waking up with a smile. The night before I tucked myself into my own dream world as usual and tried something new. I talked to myself in my head (I know I sound crazy…) about the niceness of tomorrow. I walked my way through the little bits of Monday that would be nice.

It started with my breakfast of oats with a swirl of chocolate spread mixed in. I smiled thinking about it. I know I am very easily pleased but I was looking forward to it. Other nice things were my time on my own before everyone wakes up and playing this little town building game I have on my iPad before reading a bit of news. The next niceness was waking my son up because one of our dogs always has to be involved and always makes it funny in some way. The next niceness was remembering that we bought the Blur Live At Wembley CD yesterday and me and my music mad son could enjoy listening to more of it on the drive to school.

I focused on these nice things more as they came up because I had tucked myself into sleep thinking about them. Then I started to notice more of them. It was Monday morning all right and there was something dark and menacing about it. Dark skies promised more rain and it felt like the sun had barely risen. The landscape looked haunted and beautiful. I smiled. There is beauty in darkness. There is beauty in a dark Monday morning.

I’m not sure if it slowed time down but it made me feel less of a slave to it and I carried it on for the rest of Monday. The niceness of my lovely Zoom group children, the niceness of eating the leftover focaccia bread we bought yesterday, the niceness of another dog walk under moody skies, the niceness of writing ideas filling my head, and eventually us all gathering back at home to eat dinner and talk about our days before another day ends.

And I feel lucky… I am alive. I had another Monday. I woke up. I lived and breathed and thought and felt and dreamed and noticed and experienced…. Yes time passed but that was because I lived. And one day I will be close to dying and I’ll look back and think well, that went fast but I did my best with it, I saw it for what it was and I tried to soak up and experience every moment, even the bad ones, and I didn’t wish it away and I paused as often as I could to think how amazing it was to have had a life.

Wow, if you think about it, it really is a beautiful thing to be alive…

As for now, I’ll end the day with the ultimate reward, writing. Then in bed once more, I’ll talk to myself about my stories, replay and plan scenes, listen to the characters talk and figure out plot holes and then I’ll think ahead about the niceness of Tuesdays…

In conclusion, I’ll let you know if I ever do my timeless experiment but I do wonder if living without time, having endless time would actually be some kind of hell?

The Joy Of Staying Childish

~ ChanAtkins ~ 9 Comments

Confession: I never feel like I’m a proper adult.

I’m sure I’m not the only one. In fact, I know I’m not because this is a regular topic of conversation between me and my husband. We constantly look around at other adults and discern that we are not like them. They are indeed proper adults and we certainly are not.

I’m not sure we want to be. No, probably not.

I was never the kid who wanted to grow up in a hurry and I don’t think my husband was either. I think if he could have stayed a lanky kid playing football until it was too dark to see, he would have. And if I could have stayed a bookish kid reading and writing in her bedroom, I would. Oh that’s still me!

I don’t understand people who want to be adults. I don’t understand people who are adults. I find them really hard to talk to. Most adults I come across are really, really into small talk. Small talk about cars, mortgages, interest rates, remodelling their houses, shit like that. Shit I don’t give a shit about. I never know what to say in reply. I usually have to try and not laugh.

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay (I love this photo. I feel like this will be us in the future)

I’m a giggler. And its getting worse. The older I get the more I want to giggle at everything. The slightest thing can set me off and my family know exactly how to get me going and make me choke on my tea. I’m not sure giggling with other adults happens much though? They all seem so serious. Or cheerful, about mortgages and new cars. I don’t get it.

Me and my husband just pretend at being adults. We both have jobs, though mine is one where I get to be silly with kids who love writing as much as me! My husband makes his job more fun by deliberately confusing customers or spouting random political opinions at them in a cheery manner.

As I type this I am laughing at a group chat we have on the go. I’ve got tears running down my face and my eyes sting. They don’t care though – they just make me laugh more. Sometimes I think they’re trying to kill me. My husband and I drove back from Wales yesterday after dropping our eldest back at University. I think we laughed the whole way back. At ourselves, at other people, at everything.

We look at other adults, other parents and then we look at each other, eyebrows raised.

We don’t mean to be mean, but we just don’t understand them, we just can’t gel with them. We both try hard not to get snared by anyone on the school run. Our tactics are similar. Stay in the car until the last possible minute, rush in, grab child, make no eye contact, rush back to car, phew! We don’t have a lot but we look at other people and feel glad we are not them.

Our response to life is to take the piss out of it. Our reaction to this dying world is to poke fun and laugh until we cry. No one will ever listen to us anyway, even though we know we are right about everything.

When I see a hill, I want to roll down it. When I see a tree, I want to climb it. When I see rocks, I want to jump from one to the next. I’m glad these silly childish urges have never faded. I hope they never do.

How to adult?

No clue.

It’s just not in our genes.

But my question to you today, is this. Do you feel like an adult? Do you ‘adult’ well? Does society accept and recognise you as a fully functioning adult person? Or are you like us? Do you still feel the same inside as you always did? Do you look in the mirror and find it hard to reconcile your ageing face with the childish nature inside of you?

I hope so. It’s much more fun this way.

If You Could Turn Back Time…

~ ChanAtkins ~ Leave a comment

I’m curious. If you could turn back time, first of all, would you? Second, when would you go back to and why?

I think I’ve always been a nostalgic sort of person. It’s not that I look back at the past through rose tinted glasses, it’s just that I’m ruled by my emotions, and all it takes is one song, or smell, or random memory out of nowhere and I’m transported back to a part of my life that is now over, or different. Maybe it’s just hard trying to come to grips with how fast life goes. It goes faster as you get older, right? I think we could all agree on that. I was talking about this with one of my kids the other day and we decided that the reason summer seemed to last forever when you were little was because you had no concept of time. For my youngest child, every day lasts a lifetime, whereas for my oldest child, her life is lived against the clock just like mine. As we age we are increasingly ruled by time and schedule. We have to do things by a certain time or on a certain day, and for this reason, we are far more aware of time passing. So it feels faster.

This got me thinking about time and schedules and life in general (it doesn’t take much to set me off…) and it got me wondering, if I could turn back time and go back to any point in my life, not for good, but just to enjoy it again, soak it up, experience it one more time, what part would it be?

It came to me instantly. If I could go back, just for a while, I would go back to when I was a young mum and my two eldest children were a baby and a toddler. And the reason is because life was so unbelievably simple and carefree at that time.

I had my first daughter at 24 and nineteen months later her sister was born. Looking after my daughters was my job, my full time job, my only job. I had started some of the training that would eventually lead to me qualifying as a childminder when my eldest was three years old, but back then, at one point, they were my only job, my only responsibility. They were my world.

And what a simple, sweet time it was. I’m not sure I realised it at the time but I do know I was happy. I had wanted to be a mum for a long time and felt like all my dreams had come true. I had these beautiful little girls and my entire life was looking after them, keeping them happy, having fun. I didn’t drive back then, so I walked everywhere pushing my double buggy with pride. I look back and I can see my face smiling. I remember strangers saying the predictable; ‘havn’t you got your hands full?’ and I would always say no, not really, it’s fine, I love it.

There aren’t always that many positive narratives about motherhood. Mostly, you hear horror stories of pregnancy, birth, ruined bodies, sleepless nights, dirty nappies and temper tantrums. Obviously, that’s all part of it, but I remember being surprised by how much fun it was, how much I enjoyed being with these two tiny humans.

Our lives back then were so simple. No nursery or school or work, so our days were our own. We did not have to be anywhere by a certain time. We did not have to pick anyone up or drive anyone about. It was just me and them and days to fill with fun. Good times. The best of times. And that is not to say that going on to have my two gorgeous sons was not as good. In many ways, my sons have always been easier than my girls! But because I qualified as a childminder before my third child came along, life was different. The eldest started school, the next nursery, and my son had to fit into this very scheduled life, of work and school run and dashing here and there. Same for my next son. Life is tiring. Often it is stressful. Often I start a day wishing for it to be over. I look forward to Friday and think about it as the week marches on. Sometimes there is not enough time to breathe or think. Sometimes I am horribly aware of how fast I am hurtling towards cold, final death. Sometimes I look in the mirror and do not recognise the tired eyes and fine lines staring back at me.

Back then, I was so young. So hopeful, so happy, so vibrant. I had my two longed for children and we could do anything we wanted. Life was an adventure, not a chore. I also actually liked my body. Having my daughters had shook me clear of the eating problems I had lived with for so long. For once, I was proud of my body, for growing, nurturing and feeding my babies. I was young enough to bounce back quickly after birth. I felt slim and young and attractive. The opposite to how I feel now!

So, that’s mine. If I could turn back time that is where I would go back to, just for a little while. Not that I would trade or change my life now. I wouldn’t. I just realise now how much more complicated and tiring it is. I would go back and spend some time in my young, slim body, cuddling my two tiny girls, who were the only people I had to please and who were so very pleased with every little thing I did. Simple times.

What about you? If you could turn back time just for a bit, where would you head back to and why? I would love to know.