I've been living abroad for the past two-ish years, and a combination of not having a lot of money and not knowing a lot of people has really changed my phone habits for the better. I thought maybe you guys would be interested to hear.
When I first got here, I purchased a pay as you go SIM card. At that time, I was running through about 15 euros every three weeks in data and calls. But I rarely made calls. When I did, they were almost exclusively errand-related: bank, immigration, school admin, etc. To call my friends and family back home, I use WhatsApp and other data/wifi-based services.
Data I mostly used up in connection with my GPS, getting to know my surroundings. Otherwise, there was the kind of mindless surfing, texting, social media while out and about.
About a year ago I was short on cash and didn't feel like loading up my SIM card, which resulted in me going two months without being able to make any outgoing calls or use any data. This ended up being really nice, and since then I've made a habit of just letting my data stay empty for extended periods of time.
I still have a phone number, so people can still call me. I just can't place outgoing calls. So the health insurance people can call me. My roommates can call me. My boyfriend can still call me. If I really need to call the bank or something, I just borrow somebody's phone.
During the semester, I am pretty much either on campus or at home - there is plenty of wifi in both of those places. So for the majority of my day I can still check email, text, place WhatsApp calls, use the full functionality minus outgoing network calls.
But during my hour long commute, or when I am out and about at night or during the weekend, I don't have any connection other than being able to receive calls. And frankly I really like it this way. I use my commute to read, study, or just relax and look out the window. When I am out with friends, I'm not checking my phone constantly. I don't pull my phone out in those random idle moments for a quick dopamine hit because it can't give me anything. It's generally made me just so much more relaxed and present during those in between moments.
It's not the end of the world if I don't see a text during the hour that I am commuting. It's not a big deal to plan ahead for time sensitive calls and texts and make sure I take care of them before I leave a wifi zone.
Of course, when I know I'm going to be on the road and traveling then I will load up my SIM card so I can use GPS. But I find that during my day-to-day life, not having any connectivity while I'm on the go is more of a refuge than an inconvenience.
Submitted April 27, 2018 at 08:14PM by micromermaid https://ift.tt/2JzdkXv
