On the new iPhone you can call your friends, listen to the new Beck album, send emails, Google ex-boyfriends, and even navigate your way to the closest coffee shop for a caffeine fix. The days of finding a payphone and then realizing that you’re out of quarters are long, looooong gone. Even announcements about turning off cell phones and pagers make us snicker.

I’d like to take this opportunity (5:30pm on a Tuesday sitting in a Starbucks…) to thank the techie gods for these five technological innovations I can’t imagine my life without:

1) The Laptop – I wouldn’t even be here, sitting in this Starbucks at 5:30pm on a Tuesday if it weren’t for the laptop. Mine is a black MacBook. It’s light, sleek, fast, and now that I’ve got a new battery, it holds a five-hour charge. As a writer I can’t even imagine what it must have been like to have to write papers, even novels, on typewriters. Writing a page and then realizing that there was a spelling error? The horror! Being stuck in a home office or computer lab in order to use a desktop computer? Never again! Read More »

When I don’t have my cell phone on me throughout the day, I feel naked. Truly.

During college, if I ever forgot it back at my sorority house after heading out for the day, I would somehow find a way to sprint back and get it in between classes. I was so sure I would miss the call of a lifetime during that 9 am – 10:20 am time period.

Usually, I didn’t.

Well, this addiction causes me to have frequent instances where I can swear I hear it ringing, but when I would reach into my bag and take a look, it is totally silent.

No missed calls, no new text messages, no new picture messages. What is this weird thing that I was hearing?

Am I going crazy?

Nope, just suffering from a case of Ringxiety. And yes, it is a real thing, and there has now been a study done to back it up.

According to a recent news report, “A new study found that two thirds of the people surveyed reported hearing their phone ring or feeling it vibrate when it had not actually rung. The phenomenon has been termed ringxiety…The more frequently a person uses their phone, the more often they reported hearing a phantom ring, the study found. These participants (67% of the people surveyed) had higher monthly charges, used more minutes, sent more text messages, and showed higher levels of impulsivity.” Read More »