The BART Unplugged Experiment: There's Got to Be a Morning After

Okay, all last week I went cold turkey: during my morning and afternoon commutes on BART, I kept my phone off and as safely tucked away as I would on a place during take off and landing. You may recall that what prompted all this was the realize that I was so addicted to my iPhone that I began missing my stops, and didn't even notice that someone had passed out in front of me until the train was stopped and EMTs were working on him!

It wasn't easy, this low tech ride through high tech country.  Looking around at my fellow commuters, it was hard to find someone who wasn't plugged in. Conversations were not with seatmates, but with the digitalized disembodied voices. texts, and emails. But I learned a great deal last week, and recognized that time unplugged can actually be a good thing, helping me not only tune in to my outer surroundings, but also my inner landscape.

But, as the song goes, "There's got to be a morning after."  What is most telling about an addiction is not so much what happens when you are not engaged in the addictive behavior, but what happens when you resume the behavior.

So what happened Monday morning?

Feeling oh-so-smug I waited to pull out my iPhone until we were WAY underway (look at my. I made it to Daly City without my ear phones on, without checking email, and without playing one number in Suduko. But then it sucked me in!

Old habits die hard: I looked up to get off at my Powell St. stop, and discovered that we had gone one stop beyond and I was at Montgomery.

Sigh...