by Maggie Downs posted in Parenting

We settled into the rocking chair that once belonged to my mother.
Atop a pale green nursing pillow, my infant son snuggled against me to feed. As soon as he latched, I curled my arm around his body, my iPhone in hand. The room was dark, but my screen illuminated the back of his tiny baby body in blue light. And then I scrolled.
I wasn?t always a phone junkie, but the days and nights of breastfeeding and sitting on the couch with a baby slung across my body turned me into one. It was my connection with the outside world, a break from the boredom and exhaustion I felt.
I scrolled through Facebook and Twitter, Instagram, and news apps. On my more virtuous days, I read books on the Kindle app or wrote my own stories on the Notes app, but more often than not, I found myself stuck in an endless cycle of Buzzfeed and cat pictures and reviews of avocado toast. Then I got stuck there. Two years later, the phone is still an extension of my hand.
So nobody needs The National Day of Unplugging more than me.

 
A project of cultural nonprofit Reboot, the National Day of Unplugging starts at sundown on March 3 and lasts until sundown on March 4.
The goal is not to simply endure 24 hours without a phone, computer, tablet, or laptop, but to fill that time with other ways of engaging with the world. Read a book. Sit in a coffee shop with a newspaper. Take a hike. Volunteer at an animal shelter. Drop by a neighbor?s house with some muffins. Soak i...