I didn’t plan to be phone-less for five days over Christmas. The timing just happened that way.
I looked at a recent ATT cell phone bill and swallowed hard. Normally under $100, this one was well over because we had excessively used the mi-fi capability while in Michigan winding things up with my father-in-law. While it was logically probably reasonable, emotionally it was the last straw.
I’m not traveling as much so I no longer need fancy-schmancy phone service. Even when I do travel, most restaurants now have wi-fi.
So what’s the point of a big service when your life is not so big?
I like my phone. I have a Galaxy Note 2 and even though they are up to 4 now, I still like my phone. I looked for a service where I could keep my phone, port my same number over from ATT and have a more reasonable monthly fee.
I settled on Straight Talk. It seemed simple enough. You go to a WalMart store, buy a transfer kit and ta-da it should be done.
Not quite.
In total, they ended up sending me 3 SIM cards – one to activate, one to assign a new number, one to receive the ATT number ported to the new service. I spent more than a few hours on the phone and on Live Chat to accomplish this, but finally it’s done. So far….so far.
It meant that I had NO phone service from Christmas Eve until recently. A few friends did not receive timely Christmas calls, but other than that, it was … interesting.
First, I didn’t carry a cell phone for five days. No need to.
It made me calmer. I confess to looking at the phone pretty regularly. I would say I am a moderate texter. A few of my kids are super-texters. But the reality of life is that texting is an efficient way to stay in touch. With no texts or calls coming in, I wasn’t checking the phone every ten minutes.
I paid more attention to the people around me. Do you know people whose faces you only see when they look up from their cell phones? I don’t like that with my kids. Without mom having a cell phone, we actually LOOKED at one another more often.
It’s hard to express, but a phone vacation made me feel more, well …. peaceful. The world continued to turn, the lights stayed on, commerce continued, and Christmas came upon us – all without me having a cellphone.
It made me smile and remember the gift of being present. It’s a gift the Lord gives to me and one that I can give to others. It’s good.
