Under the Bridge and Past the App Store
Newsletter Issue #46
I’m giving away a FREE One-Off Coaching Session to the next 30 annual subscribers to my newsletter! This will also give you access to some other special things coming up for paid subscribers in 2025. See details under News & Announcements below!
Happy Thursday!
Last week, I read an essay by Lindsey DeLoach Jones on HuffPost Personal. The essay is called I Traded My Smartphone For A Flip Phone For 100 Days. It Changed My Life.
I remember the day I got my first smartphone back in 2010. An iPhone. I remember my chest tightening as I sat on my living room sofa setting it up. I remember thinking, “This is too much phone for me.” I seriously considered returning it.
But I decided to give it a try, to see if I could make the adjustment. According to my app history, I downloaded my first app, Facebook, on February 6, 2010. I downloaded a fun little app called “More Cowbell!” the next day. The following month, I discovered Google Earth and Yelp. A year later, I discovered the Twitter and Instagram apps and game apps and apps that helped me find movies and TV shows to watch and music to listen to. I downloaded the Amazon Shopping app on February 2, 2011, and it has changed my life (and my budget) in not-so-very-good ways.
Over the next ten years, the ways I used my smartphone expanded. I used it to pay all my bills, to buy movie and theater and concert tickets, to save money on groceries, to plan trips, and to count steps and calories. I used it to stay connected to my email, my friends and family, my office, and my work—24/7. I used it to read the news and to search for apartments. I used it to check the weather—the current weather. Heaven forbid I open the front door and step outside to see for myself.
My iPhone has become my constant companion. It is rarely more than a few inches away from me. It’s convenient, yes. But I know it also adds to my stress levels. After all, it is rarely more than a few inches away from me. I miss that feeling of being disconnected and unplugged. Remember driving a long distance before cell phones and having a few sweet hours alone, listening to music and wool-gathering? Remember taking a walk or going to the grocery store and missing a telephone call on the landline? We survived—they left a message on the answering machine, and we called them back. I am never disconnected from the outside world anymore.
It’s an addiction. I haven’t suffered from, but have written about, gambling addiction. With gambling, the speed of the payoff determines how quickly someone will become addicted. Slot machines, for example, are more highly addictive than racetrack betting, because of the immediate payoff. It’s the same with cell phones. The speed of the payoff—the immediate gratification provided by things like social media and text notifications, email alerts, and scrolling—puts it up there with the most highly addictive substances and activities. I reach for my iPhone first thing in the morning. I reach for it while I’m watching a movie in the evening—even a movie I’m really enjoying. I reach for it when I want to know the answer to any little question that pops into my mind—I never spend time wondering about anything anymore.
Over the years, I’ve deleted the more frivolous apps—social media or games, for example—then, relatively quickly, I’ve added them back. I once purchased an iPhone stand so I could plug my phone in across the room from me, out of the reach of temptation. It didn’t work. I’d pluck it off the stand whenever I got a text alert, answer the text, then set it down beside me. I do use the “Focus” feature sometimes, to set a “Work” focus which only my family members can bypass, when I need to finish a big project at work.
After I read the essay, I checked my screentime in the settings app of my iPhone. I was beyond embarrassed. I was horrified.
I have rationalized that answering emails or catching up on social media from my phone in the evenings is multi-tasking and saves me time. I have rationalized that I have to have Instagram on my phone, because you can’t add music to your posts from your PC—honestly, my friends would probably be happier if I lost my access to that feature, which I tend to overuse. I have rationalized that the significant amount of time I spend on the NYT Games app doing the daily Wordle and the crossword (and all the other puzzles), or on the Duolingo app brushing up on my French and learning Spanish and Italian, is exercise for my aging brain. True, perhaps, but I have unused crossword puzzle books in a basket less than three feet away from me, and let’s face it—that amount of screentime isn’t good for anyone’s brain.
So, I decided to do something about it. For at least 100 days. Spoiler alert: I didn’t exchange my iPhone for a flip phone, but I did something nearly as radical. I deleted so many apps. Even apps I’d never considered deleting before because that seemed over the top, like two different web browsers and the email app. I kept the apps that are utilitarian and actually make my life easier and better, like the reminder app that keeps me from missing my one-on-one Zoom meeting with you! :)
It’s a little scary, I’ll admit. What if someone emails me in the evening and I don’t see it until the next morning? The horror! The horror! But I’m stubborn, and I know I can do anything for 100 days. And maybe the next 100 days will show me I can get by without a lot of the apps I’ve come to think I need.
Wish me luck. And please be patient with me—it may take me a little more time to respond to your email.
XOXO
Leanne
P.S. I’m giving away a FREE One-Off Coaching Session to the next 30 annual subscribers to my newsletter! As a paid subscriber, you’ll also have access to some other things I’m planning for the new year. See details under News & Announcements below!
WEEKLY ROUND-UP
Monday Blog Post: Don’t Let Me Get Me - The danger of comparing your writing journey with someone else’s.
My California: The Story Behind “The Art of Oblivion” - This short story is set up and down California’s coast—where did it come from?
Virtual Office Hours: So You Want to Build a Prologue? Note: This post is a bonus I’m offering to paid subscribers, including the writers in my Fall Into Your First Draft program.
The Story Behind "The Art of Oblivion"
When I was a young woman in my twenties, I attended the University of California at Santa Cruz. It was an amazing time of my life spent in one of the most beautiful places in the world.
NEWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS
FREE ONE-OFF COACHING SESSION!
I’m giving away 30 FREE One-Off Coaching Sessions ($150 value). To get a free coaching session, become a paid annual subscriber to this newsletter. When you go to update to a paid subscription, you’ll see this language: “FREE One-Off Coaching Session to the Next 30 Paid Subscribers!” If that language is missing, that means the 30 One-Off Coaching Session slots have been filled. Once you subscribe, I’ll reach out to book a session.
What is a One-Off Coaching Session? Booking a One-Off Coaching Session with me is a great way to get a feel for what it’s like to work with me while also getting some valuable feedback on your project, no matter where you are at in the writing process. I will provide you with a form to complete with questions about your current work-in-progress. It can be a book you are planning to write, a book you’re currently writing, or a book you’ve already written in draft. Once you return the completed form to me, I’ll return it to you with my feedback, and we will set up a 30-minute coaching call to discuss.
P.S. As a paid subscriber, you’ll also have access to some other cool things I have coming up in the new year!
The NightWriter Review is open for submissions of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry through October 24th. Submissions to The 805 are open on an ongoing basis.
You’re invited to a Book Launch Party for The Amber Waves of Autumn beach noir anthology. Please join us for reading and refreshments on Saturday, October 26th, at 6 p.m., in the San Luis Obispo Library Community Room, 995 Palm Street, San Luis Obispo, California. I’ll be reading from my short story “The Art of Oblivion,” some of the other authors will be reading from their short stories as well, and my friend Nicholas Belardes, recently interviewed in Kelp Journal, will be reading from his eco-horror novel, The Deading, set in Morro Bay.
SOME THINGS FOR READERS
Key to Happiness: An Instructional Guide
(flash fiction by Jessica Fogal for Miniskirt Magazine)
I Traded My Smartphone For A Flip Phone For 100 Days. It Changed My Life.
(Lindsey DeLoach Jones for HuffPost Personal)
Mrs. Morrison Corrects Her Obituary
(debut fiction by Taisiya Kogan for Electric Literature)
I Asked My Therapist If I Had Multiple Personality Disorder. Or Schizophrenia. If not, how come there were voices in my head.
(Paulla Rich Estes for her Substack)
The Loneliest Whale in the World
(Paul Crenshaw)
Which One Did She Choose? My Vermont House Hunt, “Episode 2.” Not as brave as I think I am.
(Catherine Palmer for Amid Life with Catherine Palmer)
SOME THINGS FOR WRITERS
3 Must-Know Screenwriting Lessons from The Penguin Pilot
(Jo Light for ScreenCraft)
How to Handle Memory Gaps in Your Memoir
(Lisa Cooper Ellison for Jane Friedman)
How Much Do We Need to Read to Have a Chance to Be Good?
(George Saunders for Story Club with George Saunders)
Debut Fiction - Does Age Matter?
(Brook Warner for her Substack)
Social Media: Writer’s Friend or Foe?
(Becky Tuch for Lit Mag News)
Do I repeat myself? [Very well then I repeat myself.]
(Benjamin Dreyer for A Word About…)
SOME THINGS TO MAKE YOU SMILE
I’m sensing a theme here …
6 QUOTES (a mini course in writing down the rain)
“The rain came down, straight and silvery, like a punishment of steel rods. It clattered onto the house and onto the rocks and pitted the sea. The thunder made some sounds like grand pianos falling downstairs, then settled to a softer continuous rumble, which was almost drowned by the sound of the rain. The flashes of lightning joined into long illuminations which made the grass a lurid green, the rocks a blazing ochre yellow, as yellow as Gilbert’s car.”
—Iris Murdoch, The Sea, The Sea
“It begins to rain. The first harsh, sparse, swift drops rush through the leaves and across the ground in a long sigh, as though of relief from intolerable suspense. They are as big as buckshot, warm as though fired from a gun; they sweep across the lantern in a vicious hissing.”
—William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
“It was a good morning, there were high white clouds above the mountains. It had rained a little in the night and it was fresh and cool on the plateau, and there was a wonderful view. ... You could not be upset about anything on a day like that.”
—Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk
The rain makes running pools in the gutter
The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night
And I love the rain.—Langston Hughes, “April Rain Song”
“On the fifth day, which was a Sunday, it rained very hard. I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.”
—Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time
“It was raining. A fine rain, a gentle shower, was peppering the pavements and making them greasy. Was it worth while opening an umbrella, was it necessary to hail a hansom, people coming out from the theatres asked themselves, looking up at the mild, milky sky in which the stars were blunted. Where it fell on earth, on fields and gardens, it drew up the smell of earth. Here a drop poised on a grass-blade; there filled the cup of a wild flower, till the breeze stirred and the rain was spilt.”
—Virginia Woolf, The Years
Leanne Phillips
Writer | Book Coach | Editor
leannephillips.com
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