“You never know unless you try”

Jan 25, 2026 — Sangam Farms, Bulwark

Today, Mumma and I did a no phones day. No texting, no Insta, nothing. And honestly, that part wasn’t a challenge for me, not even in the slightest. I didn’t miss the notifications or feel the urge to scroll.

What actually struck me was not knowing what to do next without checking the time. Should we head to dinner? Should we leave dinner? Should we sleep? Who knows. I kept reaching for a number that wasn’t there, and without it, I felt oddly lost.

It made me realize how little I listen to my own body. Am I hungry? Am I tired? I usually don’t ask. I just check the clock and let it decide for me. It’s 8, so it’s dinnertime. It’s 11, so I should sleep. When did a ticking clock become more trustworthy than my own stomach?

I think about this with all the Whoops and Oura rings too. People wake up and check a score to find out how they slept. But if I didn’t sleep well last night, I’ll feel sluggish today. I don’t need a ring to tell me that. My body already knows. It’s been telling me all along; I’ve just stopped listening.

TO BE CHANGED

And that’s the funny part. Our bodies are such wonderful, ancient machines. Over thousands of years, they’ve learnt to warn us of danger, to tell us when we’re hungry, when we’re full, when we need rest, when something’s not right. It’s the most sophisticated system we’ll ever own, and we’ve started outsourcing it to a gadget on our wrist. How much of our own will and instinct do we actually use anymore?

I saw a pretty sunset this evening. Without thinking, I reached for my phone to capture it. I love photos. They freeze time into a moment you can revisit forever. But today I had no option but to capture it in my mind, and just stand there and look at it, with the hope that I can hold on to it forever. Maybe I’ll remember it better because of that. Maybe I won’t. But I think I actually saw it, which is more than I can say for a lot of sunsets sitting in my camera roll.

Later, we played Sequence. Neither of us remembered the rules. With no Google to refer to, we played by our own whims and fancies, arguing and laughing and inventing rules as we went. It was more fun than it had any right to be.

Are our phones the reason we’ve stopped making our own rules? When the answer is always one search away, we never have to decide for ourselves. Not how a game is played, not when to eat, not how rested we feel.

Today, for once, I got to decide. And it felt really, really nice.