JC’s Confessions #8

On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert does a recurring skit, now a best-selling book, called Midnight Confessions, in which he “confesses” to his audience with the disclaimer that he isn’t sure these things are really sins but that he does “feel bad about them.” While Stephen and his writers are famously funny, I am not, so my JC’s Confessions will be somewhat more serious reflections, but they will be things that I feel bad about. Stephen’s audience always forgives him at the end of the segment; I’m not expecting that – and these aren’t really sins – but comments are always welcome.
~ JC

I have a love/hate tolerate/hate relationship with my smartphone.

It is a perfectly fine Android phone, but I can’t get used to it. I don’t find all the tapping and swiping intuitive. The first call I got on it I couldn’t figure out how to answer. I guess the Verizon Store employee assumed I would know how, although he did know that it was replacing a flip phone.

Before I go further, I should explain that I don’t use my cell phone for general communication. Only family, a few friends, and people who might need to reach me urgently have my cell number. I don’t want to hear from my dentist’s office with an appointment reminder while I am shopping or driving or visiting.

I have learned to use texts. My flip phone could text, but it was so hard hitting the numbers multiple times to get the correct letter that I seldom did it. So, I do text with my smartphone. I just don’t do it very well. I don’t have very big fingers, but the keyboard is so small that I am forever hitting the wrong letter or finding myself in the emoji section when I am trying to type a comma.

I don’t like having to have apps for – well – just about everything. I’d love to delete a bunch of them, but some of the ones that came preloaded on the phone you aren’t allowed to delete. I really, really dislike notifications from apps. I try to turn most of them off, which involves going through a bunch of confusing screens in settings.

I have a lot of trouble navigating and finding things when I need them. When we went to London in December, we sometimes had our travel documents on the phone rather than printed out on paper. It made me really nervous that I would not be able to pull up what I needed. At one point, I was trying to scan a boarding pass to get through a turnstile sort of thing and wound up on some other screen and needed to be rescued by an airport employee to get through the checkpoint. It was disconcerting.

At this point, you may be thinking, “Wow, Joanne must really be a Luddite,” but I’m not totally without technical skills. I’ve managed to keep this blog going since September, 2013. It’s not fancy, but it exists. I do much of my poetry in google docs. I’m decent at researching online and finding reliable sources, instead of fringy ones. I know how to use some keyboard shortcuts. I can even troubleshoot some problems – restarting often works wonders – although I need to call in reinforcements, sometimes. Fortunately, my spouse B has worked in tech for decades and my (now adult) daughters are digital natives, although one is quite a bit more tech-oriented than the other.

I do not, however, feel compelled to be reading or playing on my phone at all times. I don’t need to look up some factoid on whatever subject. I don’t need it to tell me what time it is or when my next appointment is. I don’t feel lost without it.

I will confess, though, that I sometimes need it to tell me the date. My paper calendar is not so good at that…
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If you want to read other JC’s Confessions, there is a handy-dandy link at the top of the page. This confession is also part of Linda’s Just Jot It January. Join us! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2020/01/19/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-19th-2020/

Get Smart(phone)

Hmmm….I seem to be indulging my love of parentheses lately.

Warning: I may move on to ellipses next…

Okay, back to the post…

Over the weekend, we went to our wireless store to shop for T’s first smartphone. Given that she is about to head to Missouri to work at a grasslands field research station, she will need GPS and access to databases and such to help with her fieldwork. She also may need it for internet access from the place where she will be living, which does not have broadband available.

They were having a half-price special on an appropriate phone, which the salesperson referred to as buy-one-get-one-free…

So, the next thing I knew, I was getting my first smartphone, too.

It’s quite a step forward in technology for me, given that I was using a flip-phone that was so old the store didn’t have a connector to copy my contacts onto the smartphone. Fortunately, I didn’t have a ton of contacts, although it was tedious to copy them myself. On the other hand, it was a lot easier to type in the names than to push the number buttons the appropriate amount of times for each letter.

It is handy to have E here, as she has had a smartphone for a while and could help me learn how to use my new phone and how to delete or disable apps that came pre-installed, but that I don’t want to bother with. She also taught me important things, like how to silence the ringer.

This probably sounds funny to people who are used to using smartphones and other devices. I realize they are supposed to be intuitive and easy to figure out, but I am not very good at dealing with symbols and swiping and such. I do better with words and manuals with an index that I can read. Of course, those don’t exist any more…

I also don’t use my cell phone as most people do. My landline is still my primary phone number. Very few people have my cell number. I realize that most people want to be connected at all times, but I don’t want anyone bothering me when I am off doing something else. I don’t want a reminder call on my dentist appointment while I am grocery shopping or visiting my parents.

I also don’t text. That may change with T leaving soon for Missouri. I do use g-chat for messaging, so texting is a natural extension of that.

One thing that will be helpful is downloading the apps for some of the stores that I frequent. Recently, our supermarket decided that it would no longer mail out coupons. Having a smartphone will make it easier to download them to my loyalty card.

Who knows? Maybe I will go wild and start taking photos and streaming videos and texting all the time and playing games and such.

Most likely, not…
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Join us for Linda’s Just Jot It January! Find out how here:  https://lindaghill.com/2017/01/23/jusjojan-daily-prompt-jan-24th-elusive/