It occurred to me recently that it had been a long time since I had put anyone on hold. With my current phone, I wasn’t even sure how to do it.
It’s not that people have forgotten how to put people on hold (it happens to you all the time when you call a business) it’s just that we don’t talk on the phone much anymore.
Phone calls have become like “snail mail”: something most people don’t want to do, unless they make a specific effort for specific reasons.
I love phone calls, but admittedly only in certain situations. I love the ability to have asynchronous conversations. And because I don’t use Google Chat or iMessage or anything like that, no one knows when I’m “online” or when I’m typing a response. And I like that.
And so, putting people on hold has become, not exactly an anachronism, but just less relevant.
But I’m bringing it back right here. Because I’m putting this site on hold.
Let me explain.
Why I started this site
When I launched The Smartphone Free Life, I had a few aims:
- To teach people how to live life without a smartphone
- To show all of the benefits of not using a smartphone
- To bring visibility and advocacy to those not using a smartphone
- To have a conversation about presence and intention, especially in the context of technology
- To talk about what its like to live in a way that’s very much different from the mainstream
- To have a link to send people when they won’t shut up about how I don’t have a smartphone
And over the dozens of posts here, I feel like I’ve started to do all of these.
Blog #2
At the same time, when I launched this site, I was continuing to write for my other site, Empathic Finance, an emotion-focused personal finance blog.
I was originally writing two posts a week for that site, and then dropped to one so I would have the time to write for this site. (Two posts a week is definitely the maximum that is sustainable for me.)
Empathic Finance is a site has some of the similar aims as The Smartphone Free Life, but applied to personal finance. For example, how to be intentional with your finances to become happier and more in touch with what’s important to you.
I’ve juggled both sites for a while now, and what’s become clear to me is that I’m dividing my attention on these two projects to such an extent that I’m unable to successfully devote enough attention to either.
I have a financial coaching business where I work one-on-one (or one-on-many) with people to help them discover, recover, and achieve their financial goals. I want to have more time to devote to that.
But with a full time job on top of all this, my time is severely limited. And given all that, advocacy for The Smartphone Free Life is not quite the hill I want to die on. At least not right now.
Not fade away
I’ve always hated blogs that die off. If you look a given blog’s post history, you start with a few weeks or months of posts every day, then it moves to every few days, then once a month or so.
Then the last post is something along the lines of, “sorry I haven’t written in so long. Life has just been so busy. But I’m going to be more focused on updating this blog from now on.“
And that’s the last post you see. From 4 years ago.
I hate that. It smacks of unintention and lack of focus. And I promised myself I would never do that.
Which is why, rather than saying that I’m adjusting my posting schedule or that I’ll just post when I can, I’m just saying I’m going to stop.
The one bet-hedge I’ll allow myself is that I may decide to restart this site at a future date. I want to leave open that possibility.
Echoing what my friend Emilie Wapnick of Puttylike and author of the excellent book How To Be Everything says, it is okay to start and stop projects as your energies and desires change. “[Q]uitting [is] … a natural and necessary step in your evolution.“
I have multiple interests (way more than just personal finance and technology) and I’m not saying that I can only have one. But my time is limited, and I don’t want to waste it.
Where you can find me
I encourage you to visit Empathic Finance, where I’ll still be posting. I’ve been at it since 2012, so I don’t envision that changing anytime soon.
And you can always reach out to me.
Remember that you don’t need to live life in the way that the tech companies and advertisers say you have to. You can forge your own path.
Onward!
– Mike Pumphrey
