Screen-free-ish?

So it's Screen-Free Week and I'm obviously not participating since I'm sitting here blogging in the middle of it. I am actually not sure we live in a world where people can go "screen-free" for a whole week anymore, and that makes me sad. But God bless them for trying.

Even though things like work and ordering toddler ankle socks and trying to figure out why in the name of bleepity frick it's snowing in May kinda prevent me from staying off the computer and TV for a week, I do wholeheartedly appreciate the concept of Screen-Free Week. Outside of our bedtime ritual of watching Wheel of Fortune together, I try to keep my son away from television (he only really pays attention when someone buys his favorite letter, E, anyway). But I still watch a lot of Food Network and surf the Web on my computer and am definitely no poster child for a screen-free lifestyle by any stretch of the imagination. (It should, however, probably be noted that without screens I couldn't read beautiful blog posts like this one that makes my day and my life better. Thanks, Andrea Scher.)

Then again, most of what I'd lose by not having a screen is stuff that I never actually needed to know, like that I'm apparently supposed to have major hangups about pooping at the office. And imagine the snow shoveling I could be getting done right now if I wasn't watching a reality show about storage units or re-pinning a recipe for Mountain Dew & Doritos Cupcakes to an inspiration board.

Just today I was in a meeting with a smartphone application developer and, after asking lots of detailed questions about how an app is programmed that may have created the impression I knew what I was talking about, was awkwardly forced to admit I don't actually own one of the things. Yes, I'm weird. Yes, I still have a land line. Yes, I clung geekily to the same Nokia phone for about eight years. (And yes, I am thinking about dropping T-Mobile when my contact expires after learning about that whole forcing a pregnant employee to use her vacation time to pee fiasco. Non-evil wireless provider suggestion, anyone?)

It's just that I think smartphones are kind of rude. They always seem to be given priority 1 by their owners. (And since apparently more people own smartphones than toothbrushes, I guess I should add: 'No offense, almost everyone on Earth?'). There also hasn't been time to publish any thorough, peer-reviewed studies on the effects of staring at those things all the time. My personal study, conducted on the sample of me, found that 1 in 1 people want to vomit after looking at one of those things in the car for more than 90 seconds. And I guess I also just know my limits: I already spend too much time watching TV and being on my computer, so why do I want yet another device that encourages me to do both?

All this being said, I am sure it won't be too long before I am forced to join the masses and own a fancy phone, probably out of some sudden necessity to take a camera phone pic of a gummi bear and apply a filter to it that makes it look like it came out of that 1960 nuclear fallout shelter in Wisconsin. (Sorry, Instagram, I still don't understand you.) But you know, for now I will count my stubborn avoidance of smartphones as my own special way of celebrating Screen-Free (ish) Week.

What are you doing to celebrate?