The phantom buzzes started in my third year at a San Francisco startup. I'd feel my phone vibrate in my pocket, check it compulsively, and find nothing. No notification. No message. Just my nervous system lying to me about urgency that didn't exist.

I was that person at dinner parties who checked Slack between bites. Who woke at 3 AM to scroll Twitter. Who felt genuine panic if my phone battery dropped below 20%. I justified it as "staying connected" and "being responsive" for my remote job. Really, I was addicted to the dopamine hits of notifications and the anxiety of potentially missing something important.

When I moved to Ravenswood—following a partner who'd taken a teaching job in Parkersburg—I didn't realize I was moving to a cell service dead zone. My first week, I spent hours standing in different corners of our Victorian cottage trying to find signal. There was one spot by the kitchen window that got two bars. Sometimes.

The first month, I walked to the library three times a day just to get Wi-Fi. By month three, I'd forgotten my library card at home and didn't bother going back for it. —  Jordan Hayes

My desk is in a tech corner we set up in the second bedroom—decent internet for work calls, but my phone just sits there, mostly useless unless I'm on Wi-Fi. At first, this felt like living in 1995. I'd finish a work call and automatically reach for my phone, only to remember it couldn't do much. No Twitter rabbit holes. No compulsive email checking. Just a brick that occasionally received texts an hour late.

Something strange happened around month two. I stopped reaching for it.

The phantom buzzes faded. My hand stopped automatically going to my pocket every few minutes. I started actually finishing books instead of reading three pages before switching to my phone. During porch conversations with neighbors, I wasn't half-listening while mentally composing tweets. I was just... there.

Last week, Sarah mentioned something funny her kid said during a walk. I laughed, we kept talking, and only later realized I hadn't thought about posting it anywhere. The moment had been enough by itself. That felt revolutionary.

I still work remotely. I'm still online eight hours a day for video calls and code reviews. But when I close my laptop, I'm actually done. My phone can't betray me with notifications because it barely gets signal. The spotty service I initially cursed has become a kind of enforced sanity.

Emma—my housemate who teaches middle school—noticed the difference before I did. "You used to check your phone during breakfast," she said. "Now you just drink coffee and stare at the wall like a normal person." She meant it as a compliment. It was.

The irony isn't lost on me: I moved here from the epicenter of tech innovation, where everyone optimizes their screen time and uses apps to limit their app usage. Here in Ravenswood, the solution is simpler—the infrastructure just doesn't support constant connectivity. Sometimes progress looks like going backward.

I'm not saying spotty cell service is the answer to digital wellness. But I am saying that enforced disconnection taught me something expensive mindfulness apps never did: most of what feels urgent isn't. Most notifications can wait. Most of what I was afraid of missing didn't matter.

These days, my phone lives face-down on the porch railing during evening conversations. Sometimes I forget it there overnight. It gets morning dew on it. I wipe it off. It's fine. We're both fine.

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