I miss when you could just disappear for a weekend.
By @reeseish · Nostalgia
You used to be able to just be unreachable. Now if I don't answer a text within an hour, my friends and family think I've been kidnapped. There was a real peace to being off the grid without anyone panicking.
The full story
I was thinking about this the other day—back in the late 90s or early 2000s, before every single person had a smartphone, you could genuinely just be out of touch for a whole weekend and it wasn't a big deal. You'd make plans on a Friday to meet someone at the movies at 7:30, and you just... showed up. If they were late, you waited. You couldn't text them 'omw' or 'running 5 mins behind.' There was a certain trust and patience baked into everything. I remember going on camping trips with my family and for three days, we were just gone. No calls, no emails, no one expecting an immediate response. The world didn't end. Your friends just figured you were busy and they'd hear about it on Monday when you called them on their landline after school. Now, the expectation of constant availability is exhausting. I went on a hike last month and lost service for maybe six hours. When I got back to my car, I had three missed calls from my sister and a text from my mom asking if I was 'okay??'. It's like we've forgotten how to just exist on our own. People's first assumption is that something bad happened, not that you're just living your life, disconnected. It was a quieter, less anxious way to live, and I have to say, I really do miss it. It felt like you had more control over your own time and attention, and people didn't take your silence so personally.
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