I had kind of been formulating this post for a couple of days, but it really came to the top of my attention list this evening:
A friend of mine texted my phone tonight while I was out, no big deal, right? Well, not really, except I have a landline! My phone provider left a voice message on my answering machine from their “text to landline” service which took my friend’s text message, ran it through a text-to-speech and played it back to me with a date and time attached. Really cool service, I appreciate that guys!
This kind of brought up the issue that I don’t have a cell phone, which is something I’ve been thinking about lately.
The way I see it, there are two or three really good reasons I don’t have a cell phone:
1) I can’t afford one! I’m a broke student at the moment, I’ve made it this far without a phone, so I can’t really justify the expense at the moment. I had a phone for about 6 months last year, which was because an employer wanted me to have a phone so badly that he was willing to pay for that phone and the service. This actually ended up confirming my lack of desire for a phone permanently attached to me.
2) A cell phone is basically a leash. I really like being able to disconnect – all of the internet services I use on a daily basis, no matter how invasive they are or how explicit they are about my personal life and habits, can be totally unplugged from in an instant. From the easy signing offline to the extreme end where you actually delete your account from a service, it’s relatively easy to pull your presence down. With a cell phone, once you get one and you start giving out the number you are expected to be available to answer it regularly, or at the least respond to voice messages somewhat promptly.
3) I actually hate talking on the phone. I don’t like calling people (Well, with a very few exceptions. 
) unless I have a very specific purpose. And the same goes for talking to people that call me. That’s really all there is to say about it, but for me that’s a pretty good reason.
So there you go, a whole lot more than you wanted to know about my lack of a portable phone.
The Carolina Symphony was playing in town tonight, that was a great concert! The cello soloist was as beautiful as the music she played – wow, just wow!
