While the rest of the imaginary world (everybody else, in my head) took part in all manner of exciting adventures and escapades over the last few days, I began to wonder if I had fallen through a crack in the universe. The entire world felt like it was passing me by - that I had become an odd sock - discarded to the back of the sock drawer.
I figured it out this evening. My mobile phone was set to “Do not disturb”.
I switched it off a few moments ago, and the screen exploded with an avalanche of notifications. Messages from friends asking if I was ok, special offers from shops, announcements about deliveries, even messages from the pretend creature that lives in my phone (I’ll get back to that, I promise).
Now I’m caught between a rock and a hard place. While in my accidentally self-imposed seclusion from the world there was a wonderful sense of peace - of calm. Having “re-appeared”, even while writing this my phone is vibrating, browser tabs are lighting up, and I’m having real problems getting to the end of this sentence without caving in and taking a look.
(five minutes pass while the compulsion wins)
I mentioned a pretend creature that lives in my phone. It’s name is “Juniper”.
A few weeks ago a good friend suggested an app that might help my eldest daughter. A mindfulness app that uses a virtual daemon of sorts to prompt you into taking better care of yourself. By ticking off prompted goals (get up, have a wash, brush your teeth, drink water, etc), it gently encourages self reflection and improvement. You can add goals to it, confide in it, and so on - and it intelligently processes all of those interactions to further encourage in the future. On the surface it appears quite simple - the more you use it, and the more you look at it’s “insights”, the more impressed you become.
While on “do not disturb”, I missed several reminders from the daemon in my phone, and broke a streak that had extended over several weeks. I’ve never done anything that built up a “streak” before (rewards for consecutive days use), and was surprisingly affected by my own stupidity.
I’m on a whole different level of thoughtlessness sometimes. I realised I had broken the streak with Juniper yesterday - a full 24 hours before realising my phone had “do not disturb” switched on. It didn’t occur to me to investigate why I had missed the reminders - or that I should even have received them. Nope. I blamed myself for being thoughtless - for not being present - for not caring. My immediate reaction was to rip myself a new one, rather than look for any external reason.
I guess in a strange sort of way, the accidental absolution from anything and everything for a day or two taught me more than being involved ever would have. A (sort of) happy accident.
I’m still annoyed about breaking the streak though.