Do your best, take a rest, sing yourself a song

Yesterday, with my nose stuck in my iPhone as I waited for a light to turn green downtown, I was startled when a man walked by me the opposite direction and mockingly said, "Hey ladies. The light's green."

The young professional woman next to me and I hastily made our way across the busy street- temporarily ending our important phone exchanges (she was BBM-ing, I believe, and I was of course lost, and mapping my way to the restaurant I had parked 3 blocks away from).

Then today, a friend emailed me saying, "Hey. Why don't you just call me?" in regards to a long email exchange we'd been having about running a 10k this summer.

If you're counting, it took 4 months of having a smartphone for me to turn into a fortress against real-life conversations and interaction.

I'm going to attempt to scale back but the reality is that I'm getting my ass kicked between work, freelancing, cat-sitting, moving out, pretending like I'm fit enough to run actual races, and maintaining a pretty new relationship (i.e., one where I pretend like I'm not at all stressed from running around downtown by myself in the midst of tornado warnings and high winds, while being accosted by some of Minneapolis' finest street characters). I don't really have time to call everyone I want to call, or happy hour with everyone that's around. It's not ideal, but emailing and texting my way through this crazy summer is going to be the best I can offer to most.

In addition to using my smartphone for the purpose of keeping in touch with everyone, I'm going to continue to kiss it each night for allowing me to maintain a semblance of sanity. Between the mapping and a quick call to BF, I breezily arrived at a fabulous Brazilian steakhouse we've been excited to try, and gamely ate red meat for the first time in at least 6 months. All the while I snuck peeks at my phone to ensure that work was under control, freelance meetings hadn't been cancelled, and that there weren't any news stories declaring that 2 residential cats had set a neighborhood on fire as retaliation for the abandonment they were feeling after being left with an overworked tepid catsitter who won't even let them drink from the sink.

I'm winning, against all odds. Eventually it will come crashing down and you will find me in the fetal position in my new apartment, surrounded by unpacked boxes, wondering why I bite off more than I can chew. For now, I'm enjoying what smug feels like.