In a case

I want to treat my phone like a gun.

That came to me at my desk today, a few hours in. Restlessness and impatience had been building. My hand reached for the phone before any thought arrived. The gesture was automatic. I wasn’t going to do anything with it. I just wanted the hit.

a weekend offline

I’d spent Thursday afternoon to Sunday afternoon staffing an MKP initiation weekend up in the mountains. MKP is the ManKind Project, a men’s community. NWTA is its initiation weekend, the New Warrior Training Adventure. The land we used had no cellular coverage.

I knew that going in, so I’d set things up before leaving. Cleared the calendar. Told the people who needed to know that there was an emergency number if anything came up. Put the phone in my bag. I never reached for it during the weekend, because I’d decided not to before I left, and because the weekend itself was busy enough that it wasn’t in my mind.

I plunged in the lake at sunrise. The days were outside in the wind, with a creek behind the lodge. Most of the work happened in circles with other men. None of it happened in front of a screen.

Sunday afternoon we wrapped, and I had one more day in the area before heading home. Phone back on, signal back. Notifications I didn’t open. By the time I sat down at my desk this morning, the offline stretch had reset something.

back at the desk

Software work with two to four coding agents running in parallel is a constant slot machine. An agent finishes, I check the output, send the next prompt, switch to another. Today is the first full work day back.

I can feel the dopamine climbing, and I notice the baseline moving with it. The cause is right there in the work setup. Two to four agents going at once means there’s always one waiting for me to look. The instant the wait starts to feel like a wait, I can switch, and that switch is the hit. To feel anything new by lunch I need a slightly louder hit than the one that worked at breakfast. Then a louder one after that. The work is fun. The escalation is the part that reads to me as addiction.

In between all of that, I keep subconsciously picking up the phone. Checking social media. Checking if my love has sent a message. Checking the balance of my bank account. The reach happens before I’ve decided anything.

the gun

I’ve held a gun a couple of times at a firing range. I didn’t gesture with it. I didn’t let my hand drift. I kept it pointed down, kept my finger off the trigger, had a clear reason every time I changed the grip. The thing asks for seriousness in a way other objects don’t.

The thought I had at my desk was this: I want to handle my phone the same way. Clear purpose before picking it up. Mindful of what I’m doing with it.

The phone won’t shoot anyone. But it costs me, in small handfuls of attention I haven’t been counting.

I’ve never felt anything like it before. The realization came through the body, before any thinking. Like the knowing landed below words, and I just had to find them.

the practice

So I want to put the phone in a case, out of casual reach. On the desk is fine. The real practice is catching myself when the hand starts to reach.