I’m 30 years old and getting my first smartphone. Help?

I’ve always been a late adopter.

I got a pager when I was 14 years old. It was the year 2001. I used to page myself 07734, it read “hello” when you turned the pager upside down. Other than that, I think my mom is the only person to have ever paged me and she probably only paged me once. I was hype though.
In high school, I was the last to get a cell phone. I had over 20 phone numbers memorized and I carried a checkbook-sized notebook for the ones I didn’t have memorized. I knew which friends had “free nights and weekends” and wouldn’t worry about me using up their minutes. Eventually, I got a girlfriend and I didn’t want to have to call her from my parent’s house phone anymore. I downloaded the ringtone of The Temptations’ “My Girl” and programmed my phone to play it when she called.
In college, when people first started to text, I’d call them back. I’d tell all of my friends that I didn’t have unlimited texting, so please, just call me. I remember hating texting. It felt inefficient and impersonal. But slowly, people stopped answering calls. So I started to text.
The other weekend, while hanging out with my family, I learned that I send the most texts of the six people on our family’s family plan, over 1,200 texts a month. Impressive because I typed those texts out one thumb, one button at a time, on my flip phone. I bought it at Walgreens for $20 last summer when my previous flip phone died.

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I’ve resisted getting a smartphone for a short list of reasons like the cost and the creepy ease with which smartphone users can be surveilled (have you read 1984, people?!).

At the top of my list, though, was my fear that I didn’t have enough self-control to always have the internet in my pocket. This wasn’t baseless existential worry. For over a decade, I’ve had a difficult relationship with the internet.
It started out lightly. I’d get on my computer to work and as soon as something got difficult, I was only a few clicks away from my favorite escapist drug, surfing the World Wide Web. I’d devour articles on BBC News, Philly.com, AllAfrica.com, Citypaper.net (RIP) and ESPN. I’d research obscure island nations and semi-autonomous regions on Wikipedia (Socotra, anyone?). At some point, Facebook introduced the News Feed and I’d engage in paragraph-long discussions on Facebook about everything my friends and I were reading when we should have been working.

In search of a more intentional smartphone practice.

Despite the habit, I still got my work done. Until I couldn’t. I was working as the lead fundraiser at a small nonprofit as the work got more difficult, the procrastinating got worse. I’d start to read an article until focusing on even that got difficult and I’d stop before the last few paragraphs. Over the course of a year or two, I slowly stopped reading articles all together.
Instead, I’d just mindlessly flip between the same websites and read headlines while scrolling down the homepage. It became a mind-numbing game of vapid internet hopscotch. I was jumping from site to site until I reached the end of my favorites, then I would turn around to jump through them all again until entire months at work would pass in the blink of an internet junkie’s prolonged stare at the computer screen.
I started staying late to work or working from home because I wasn’t getting it done during the day. I felt out of control, broken and incredibly ashamed.
I ended up leaving my job, thinking that I was an addict and that I couldn’t get clean at a desk job like an alcoholic couldn’t work at a bar. I thought if I left the strict grant deadlines and computer-dependent work to pursue my passions as an artist, educator and event producer, I’d be cured. I saved up money, left my job and started working for myself.
It wasn’t a cure-all. I still felt hypnotized by my computer, unable to leave it at 4:30 p.m. on a sunny Friday with no work left to do. I eventually went to therapy, learned how to have better emotional awareness, learned that I wasn’t broken, to let go of shame, to develop mindfulness and employ useful strategies to harness my “habit energy.” I also came to learn and accept that the internet is really fun and it’s cool to take some intentional, shame-free breaks to watch old Prince Naseem Hamed fights on YouTube.

A year of therapy and continued maintenance worked. I’m basking in the joy of being productive. My professional life as a poet, teaching artist, event producer and performer is thriving. I cofounded a new business called Camp Bonfire, a summer camp for adults that’s a technology-free zone.
The thing is, I resisted getting a smartphone because I thought it would detract from my productivity. Now not having one is hindering it. Some days I travel with an iPod to use for a poetry lesson, a cable to attach it to my portable speaker, a GPS to get me to a school in North Jersey, a camera to take pictures of a summer camp I am considering to rent and my computer to pull up a document for a phone call with my business partner. Sometimes I feel like a time-traveling spy sent from the past with a briefcase full of antiquated gadgets.
On a deeper level, I thought that a smartphone would make me into a distracted and numb person. I have more faith in myself now that I can use this tool with intention. I have skills I didn’t have a few years ago. When I am working and I feel the urge to numb out I take a moment to figure out why. Sometimes it’s because I don’t know where to start or need to do more research to continue. Sometimes I’m just hungry.
I’m still scared to get a smartphone. It’s not a multibillion-dollar industry because people use them every once in awhile, like the juicer I got as part of a New Year’s resolution.
I don’t expect myself to be perfect. When I find myself using my phone in a way I don’t want to I won’t send myself down a cycle of feeling bad and thus in search of more numbing out. I’ll notice my distraction, take moment to understand why, keep it moving and try to do better next time. I’m excited about moderation.

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Here are some of the questions I put to my friends on Facebook this week about my new smart phone — my sister in law’s old iPhone 5S. I’d love to read your answers in the comments below.

• Do you have advice on not becoming a screen-obsessed person?
• Any advice on keeping this thing charged (my flip phone lasts four days!)?
• Should I get on “the ‘gram”?
• Are there calendar apps that you like? (I don’t know if I’m ready to give up my Moleskine calendar just yet.)
• Can I use GPS without using data?
• What are some travel apps that you like?
• Favorite member of Wu-Tang?
• Sync the email or don’t sync the email (I use three Gmail accounts)?
• How do I make my iPhone keypad responsive like an Android? Whenever I type using someone’s Android it feels easier.
• Will I become cooler or less cool?
• Can I wear a hip case?
• What about a Bluetooth earpiece?