In the 21st century a marriage is often between three entities – the husband, wife and the cell phone. The cell phone is at the dinner table, he watches the television and also comes to bed with you. Granted the cell phone is useful to keep in touch with family and friends who live far away but more often than not it is also an uninvited permanent guest in your house.

At home I try to keep away from the cell phone myself. But only a few minutes pass by and my hand searches for the cool, slim feel of my phone. I keep checking it even when it isn’t required. I always need to check my Facebook , not out of necessity but more out of habit. I need to remind myself that nothing much changes in the span of ten minutes. Instagram, although fun, is one of my biggest vices. I feel the need to check my phone the first thing in the morning to see what’s new. I need to see how many people ‘like’ my picture. It doesn’t matter that it’s morning and breakfast needs to be made, no, let’s first see what’s up on Instagram.

Maintaining a healthy distance from my cell phone is something I’m trying to do this year and I’ve also enlisted Jay to accompany me in this difficult journey. I know that going cold turkey will not work. I need to slowly wean myself away from the phone. I’d like to think that Jay is a worse than me when it comes to this. He works on the computer the whole day, comes home and we watch TV for a while with a handful of interruptions thanks to the cell phone. It’s either my whatsapp messages beeping or him checking mails, Facebook, etc.

Why do we need to always be so in tune with what’s new? Didn’t we survive just as well without these constant updates? Technology has made us so dependable that we need real time updates on who commented on our Facebook status and omg the world will end if you didn’t get that and reply in time  Before these ‘apps’ and mobile social networking we would log in to Facebook, and check e-mails maybe  once or twice a day and that was okay.

So this year I’m making a conscious decision to cut down my cell phone time by at least a half. It doesn’t help that there is a WordPress app too. But hey, you should try, right?