My name is Juliet B.

My name is Juliet B. and I am an addict.  

I am addicted to my phone.  Seriously.  Though I'll attempt to find some humor in it.

For those of you who know me, this may not come as a shock.  And whether you know me personally or not, you might think, "What's the big deal? Every person you see is one his or her phone all the time."  True.  But yesterday, I had a few minor epiphanies, and I thought I'd share them.  Maybe they will give you insight into your own phone use (abuse?) as well.  Or just open a window into mine.

I live in a New Jersey suburb, but I had to commute into Manhattan for a seminar downtown. I packed for a 45 minute train ride and a 10 minute subway ride, as I have many times, with my wallet, my iPad, a small note book, my new Bose headphones (not tiny earbuds any more... going for the superior sound quality and comfort), a train schedule, a water bottle, a pencil case filled with pens, pencils, & sharpies, my camera, and a few other things, including, my iPhone, SO I THOUGHT.

It's a very short drive to the train station, and when I got there, I locked the car, and bought my ticket for the train and sat down to send a few texts to my husband and son.  I left them each  $50 and wanted to make sure they knew it.  I rummaged around my fairly sizable pocketbook* for my phone and couldn't find it right away.  With the train coming in 2 minutes, I figured I'd wait until I was on the train and seated to really look for it.

Settled into my spot by the window, I began to look in earnest for my phone. It wasn't the first time this has happened.  It's a big bag. Out came the wallet, the iPad, the notebook, my new headphones, camera, reading glasses, sunglasses, water bottle... getting near the bottom now... oh, look, those ginger mints I got at Sea-Tac airport...hand cream, lip balm (a mild panic is setting in as I start sifting through the small stuff), loose change, the missing button from my suede jacket...no phone yet.  I look in the pocket compartments of the bag. Nope. I check my own pockets again. I check the outer lining of the pocketbook, as if an invisible rip could have appeared. Nothing. 

A sick feeling was rising up.

I forgot my phone. I must have left it on the dining room table.  

As I replaced the contents of my bag, I looked out the window of the train. I'm now two stops away from home. I could disembark, wait for the next train, go home, get the phone take the next train and I'd just be late for the seminar.  No, that's not right.  I could call my husband, ask him to bring the phone to the next stop on the train jump out, get the... no, I can't call him, and he's probably gone to work.  I could go home, get the phone, drive to New York, pay to park, maybe be on time, maybe hit a ton of traffic in either direction... or maybe I can go one day with no phone.

Maybe I can do this. Maybe I have to.

The first thing that happened is I started to think about all the things I could not do.  I could not do what I always do on the train, which is text people, check my email, play sudoku, scrabble, and check the return trains on the NJ Transit app.  

As I mentioned, I do have an iPad, but I have the type which requires wifi.  I am my own personal hot spot. (I know how that sounds, but I pay a little extra to AT&T and through some voodoo magic, my iPhone makes me a wifi  hotspot.)  My iPad does have a book on it, and I decided to read.  I took it out and read a few pages, and then actually took a nap on the train.  So, for those of you waiting for the silver lining in this tail of woe, that was it.  I slept on the train.  

Part of my plan was to grab breakfast in town before the seminar, so I looked for a place with free wifi (which in NY is pretty easy) and while eating my omelet I sent off messages to some of the people on my list with whom I had hoped to connect.   "No phone, talk to you later."  "In the city today with no phone, home tonight."  To my son, I typed where I was going to be all day, in case of an emergency.  (He later said he hadn't seen that email, but it gave me peace of mind at the time.)  

I pictured my iPhone on the dining room table buzzing and ringing all day.  Poor little ignored thing.  No one to Tweet with it.  No one checking Instagram regularly.  No one looking at email and Facebook.  All those missed texts.  And the calls I was missing!  I could not stop thinking about that.  

As I walked through New York to my seminar, I was not noticing the beautiful day.  I was not people-watching, or smiling at the parents with their kids, or the dog-owners with their dogs.  I wasn't even noticing fun shoes or great architecture like I usually do.  I was still thinking about my phone, and the things that I hadn't done, follow-up work calls I hadn't made, emails I hadn't sent, texts that had to wait until I got home much later. It was my parents' anniversary... should I borrow someone's phone to call them? Would I even know anyone at the seminar well enough to impose on them like that?

This was when it hit me.  I am addicted to my phone.  I don't need to be ON IT all the time, but I need it to be ON ME all the time.  Is there a 12-step program for this?

I do sometimes unplug, from my computer for sure, and from my phone... almost completely.  But even at those times, I know that my phone is nearby, and available if there is an emergency.  If I had an emergency yesterday, it would have had to be at a Starbucks, so I could use the wifi to email someone from my iPad!

At the seminar, like any good presenter, our teacher went around the group and had us introduce ourselves.  When it was my turn, I nearly said, "I'm Juliet, and I forgot my phone today."  I didn't, but I did have a hard time focusing in the beginning.  Luckily, he was a great teacher, and I dove into the day.  The building had wifi, and I checked my email during the break, and had the chance to follow up with a few of the things that were pressing.  

By the time it was time to leave, I knew I was going to be okay.  I walked back to the subway station, this time cutting through the park.  I looked around and noticed people this time.  Everyone was on their phone, iPhone, iPad, Kindle, and so on. Even a young man and woman who looked like they were having a fairly intimate moment both had their headphones on and were holding separate iPhones.  Only one 20-something guy was reading an actual book as I walked through the rows of benches.   

I got near the subway station, and dug out my ticket. Normally I would have checked the NJ transit app to see which train I could make.  Instead, I pulled out the paper train schedule when I got on the subway, and calculated my timing.  

When I got home, I remembered to hug my family and say hi to my dogs before I rushed to the phone.  And there it was. Right on the table.  Now to see how much I missed.  

No calls.

A few Facebook posts, none specifically for me.

One text.

Several emails, but nothing urgent.  Most of the people who received my earlier notes replied with "No iPhone, Juliet? Are you okay?"

Life went on without my phone.  It didn't kill me.  Did it make me stronger? I don't know about that.  It did make me a bit more self-aware.  Will it make me change my phone habits?  Maybe.  I consider myself a polite cell phone user already.  But maybe after I'm done writing this, then Tweeting it, I'll turn of the phone and go outside to my garden and leave the phone in its spot on the dining room table.  It seems that I generate a lot less work for myself that way.

Oh my apps, how I missed you!

*Fun fact:  They don't say pocketbook in the Pacific Northwest.  They say Purse or Handbag.  They looked at me like I was Ethel Mertz when I referred to my bag as a pocketbook when I was out there.

It's Just A Box of Tapes

You and Me, iPod!

I have been involved in a love affair.


It began in 2003, on Valentines Day.  And it continues to this day...


This is sounding cliche, and wait, because it gets worse.  My husband is responsible for introducing us.


He bought me my first iPod with his first bonus check from a then-new job, and I have never looked back.


This did not start my love affair with the recorded song, of course.
My first records, two 45's,were given to me with my first record player when I was 6 by my parents.  I remember vividly sitting right down on the kitchen floor in our little house in Sacramento, California, and playing "Heroes and Villains" by the Beach Boys and "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" by the Beatles over and over again.  These were the brand new hits (1967) and being played on every radio station in America.

A small sampling of my wonderful collection of 45's.
I'm waiting til we get a Jukebox for the billiards room.
I'm waiting til we get a billiards room.

When I hit middle school, I would save my allowance and babysitting money to buy records.

My  record collection was expanding, and now technology had really taken off.  Cassette tapes!



I never was one for buying pre-recorded tapes, but I quickly realized the joy of making a mixed-tape.  Every new car had a cassette player ... (or an eight track, but I seemed to skip that whole genre somehow).


When my boyfriend got his license I made him a tape for his car. Car songs, mixed with my favorite songs to hear while riding in a car.  I'm sure he never played it.  My creativity was bursting.  When my friend moved to Chicago, I made her a poignant tape of songs about being friends, imaging how she'd cry when she heard it.


Headed down the Jersey shore?  I made the "perfect" mix of classics by the Beach Boys, Steve Miller Band, the Beatles, SuperTramp, Kansas, Foreigner, Billy Joel, Fleetwood Mac, and the Who, with a few of the radio's top hits mixed in to get us down there and back.


What started as a few tapes for a car ride, however, morphed into a shoe-box of tapes for longer rides. By the time I was in college, my record and tape collection was still modest compared to what it is now, but it all had to come with me.

American Beauty...A New Reality?

And then came the spiritual awakening  known to many as American Beauty.*


Can a record album be life changing?


Yes.


(You know this scene in Freaks and Geeks?  Yeah.  Like that.)


Once I got on the bus**, my music collection took a weird and wonderful turn.  My record catalog doubled, my tape collection grew exponentially. I no longer stuck to one favorite radio station. I began to search to the origins of blues, soul and country music and had to discover the roots of everything.  At parties I'd gravitate to where the music was.  Soon I was travelling with a wooden crate of tapes just to get back and forth from Boston to New Jersey for breaks.


  When my friend Patti was going on a road trip I made her a tape (Life in the Fast Lane by the Eagles and Helen Hell on Wheels by Wings).  There were party tapes and mellow tapes.   All my mixed tapes took a psychedelic turn as my musical tastes did as well.  Jefferson Airplane, It's a Beautiful Day, Blind Faith, lots of Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, and Jimmy Cliff joined the Grateful Dead on the lovely montages I was putting together with still contained classics like the Eagles, Elton John, Chicago and Paul McCartney's solo stuff.  I had dreams of becoming a radio DJ and playing what I thought were perfect mixes of music, getting lost for hours in my own record collection. 



  And then, there were the Grateful Dead live tapes.


  One of the more remarkable and outstanding things about the Grateful Dead is, and always has, been their generosity with their music.  They have allowed and encouraged taping of their live shows, and these tapes used to be traded around, mostly for free or for a blank tape.  If you attended a concert that you loved, you'd make a few calls and try to find a good version of that tape, so you could hear it over and over. (The sharing of the music continues, by the way.  It is now done online, by those "tapers," who upload their shows, with the generous permission of the band.)


I'd hunt down rare versions of singles and live versions of concerts.  Did Jerry Garcia actually make a little joke at Bob Weir's expense in Buffalo?  I had to have that tape! The Blues Brothers joined the Dead for the closing of the venerable Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco? I needed the soundboard this time, not an audience version!

I did go to class, in case you were wondering.  By this time, the Walkman was invented!  So wonderfully small, you could take this thing everywhere and bring your music with you!

The Walkman, next to an iPod shuffle, in my hand.

After college, I married my boyfriend, and we decided to make San Francisco our home. He understood my music addiction and was okay with it.  That drive required a new dimension of tape toting.  All the tapes fit snuggly into a wooden crate, re-purposed from a wine crate, that had a rope handle.  Well, let me be honest here.  The tapes fit into three of these.  And these were just the tapes I chose for the car ride across the country.  The rest were packed into boxes and I prayed they stayed safe and dry on their trip.

One of the boxes of tapes.

When CD's started to become popular in the late 80's I was cautious, but excited.  Recorded music that doesn't get warped, scratched, melted, or tangled up in the player? And the sound quality is better than anything yet? Of course I had to try it.  The last records I remember buying were Paul Simon's Graceland (1986) and the The Traveling Wilburys (1988).  We did not have the technology to burn CD's yet, nor did we have a CD player in our car or van, so we pretty much stuck with records and tapes for quite a while, while slowly adding CD's to our collection.


Lets just say that if they had not come up with the iPod when they did, I might have qualified for a role on that show called "Hoarders."


Now, don't get me wrong, I still have all the tapes, CD's and records.  I still buy a new CD every so often.  But when I want ONE song off one album?  Or I have the record already and I just need it digitally? I am thrilled to save the room and click "buy" from iTunes.  I can even do it right from my phone when the muse hits me waiting online at Shoprite.  (Come on, haven't you ever heard the Muzak version of Spirit in the Sky by Norman Greenbaum and needed the original immediately?)


My latest download was, like many people, a Monkees compilation, to round out my iTunes catalog and join the world in mourning the death of the cutest Monkee, Davy Jones.  My favorite download lately?  I guess the one I've played the most is Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood at Madison Square Garden. It amazes and delights me that I can now carry all my music, create moods, cheer myself up, and quickly "name that tune," all with this one magical perfect little device.


Well, two little devices.  My iPhone doesn't quite hold enough music, so I still cart around my iPod as well, because, well, you just never know which of the 4,500 songs you might need at any given moment.  The good news is they all fit in my pocketbook!

True love 4ever.

NOTE: I guess a blog post about my love of my iPod would not be complete without a playlist to accompany it.  So,  if you'll notice some of the songs are highlighted, so they are clickable links.  They should lead you to YouTube links of songs to listen to as your read about my somewhat abbreviated journey through the recorded song.

*You know, man, that if you look at the lettering just right, dude, it also says... American Reality. WHOA.

**Became a fan of the Grateful Dead

New note:  This iPod has since actually died, may it's memory be for a blessing.  I am now, somewhat dubiously, in the cloud, trusting my catalog to the people at Apple.  We will see how that goes for one year.