During our last cruise in 2009, I did not have a smart phone. Social media barely existed. Nor did many of the apps now part of everyday life.
My then-phone did not include an international coverage option. My wife and I phoned home just once that week, using a calling card (remember them?) and then only by navigating an ancient pay phone in Cozumel, Mexico.
These days, wireless companies are happy to sell you a cruise ship package. The cruise lines provide an expensive WI-FI option or a slightly cheaper “social” WI-FI package that provides access to social media sites only. Or for $5, a cruise ship app that enables the user to check activity schedules, make dinner reservations and create a list of friends on board to instant message.
I wanted no part of any of this. Nothing against friends that post hourly updates from their vacations, including cruises, but I want less digital media in my life, especially on vacation. So I turned the phone off for the duration, even in Cozumel, which my wireless provider now includes for data and voice.
I’ve written about my frustrations with cell phones, from the people who text and scroll through social media feeds in church, yoga class, and the gym to the ones idling at stop lights in front of me long after the signal turns green. As a parent of teenagers, I worry about how screen-addicted kids will function in a world where success often depends on extended focus, deep work, and mindfulness.
So I wasn’t about to spend my nine-night cruise, including four days at sea, staring at a screen to communicate with friends and family not on the cruise and keep up with politics, sports and everything else back home.
As a result, I read three books, worked out twice a day, attended classes on meditation and juggling, watched four comedy shows, twice sung karaoke (badly), competed in two costume contests, attended a class where I made props for those costumes, interviewed five people, and learned the following four things from ditching the phone.
TIME SLOWS DOWN: Sure I was on vacation and on a cruise ship where the phone would have been useless had I not paid for WI-FI anyway. (Those who bought it found it unreliable.) But I’ve been on vacation in the USA where I’ve been guilty of checking email, sports scores, and social media. Those vacations, in many respects, seemed just as hurried and frazzled as non-vacation time.
Without a phone, I had an abundance of time since I didn’t fill all of the gaps with the phone or the Internet. I’ve succeeded at this in recent years by carrying a book everywhere I go, boosting the number of books read. Not having a phone gave me a sense of mindfulness and purpose. I improved my juggling and meditation skills, finished second in a costume contest, created a new workout, and at times found myself staring out at the ocean for 10 to 15 minute intervals.
CAMERAS WORK GREAT: Phones have replaced cameras, but this was no excuse to use a phone on the cruise either. I brought along my 9-year-old DSL camera, finally using non-automatic features consistently, perhaps because I had plenty of time to practice them. We spent plenty of time in and on the water during shore excursions, so a Go Pro camera was more than adequate and actually better than a phone camera.
Did I take fewer photos? Probably. But when you’re not looking at every moment as a recordable, sharable event, you live in the moment and enjoy it more.
WORK WON’T MISS YOU: None of us are irreplaceable at work. They can get along without you. If you have a full-time employer, there’s no reason to go without a phone on a cruise; they know you’re gone. I’m self-employed and occasionally get rush gigs that need to be done within 48 hours. I was afraid I’d miss out on a couple of those.
In reality, I missed nothing. I told my main clients I’d be gone and nothing was waiting via email or text that I could not deal with on the day I returned.
NO-INFORMATION DIETS TASTE GREAT: Cruise ship cabin televisions have news channels, though we kept ours tuned to that screen that tracks the ship’s position. The sports bar on our boat featured four ESPN channels, though they were tweaked with more international programming. I did pop in a couple of times to check college basketball scores, but otherwise I missed everything that transpired during that nine-day stretch.
Actually, I didn’t miss anything.
