Let’s not goes as far as to call the following a resolution, let’s just call it an observation aimed at self-change. A few weeks ago, while waiting for five years worth of pictures of babies and feet to transfer from my old phone to my new phone at the Verizon store, I found myself phone-less for four hours. I had a few errands to run, but after I’d run them, there will STILL more pictures of buildings and salads to transfer over (I KNOW, I KNOW, I NEED THE CLOUD / WHAT IS THE CLOUD)  and so I had an hour or so with nothing to do but wander the mean the streets of Glendale. It’s been noted that us generation phone people experience a weird panic when we don’t have them. I didn’t feel anxious, per-se, but I felt lighter, more aware. As I wandered, I passed by a small storefront, with a tiny old sign, BOOK BINDING. Inside, a workshop filled with papers and sheets of leather and tight wheels of string and ashtrays and half-drunk bottles of red wine. Presiding over all of it, a tiny, focused old man carefully binding a book, which I decided he learned from his Grandfather, and he from His. I watched him do his work for a good ten minutes before he spotted me staring. He looked into my soul, not my camera roll, but my soul, then returned to his work. I never would’ve seen a book being bound in real time if I’d had my phone. I guess my point is, and it’s not a resolution, it’s just a point: as a writer, I’m meant to be constantly absorbing the world. I think my phone stops me from doing so, as it’s sort of just the mindless consumption of other people’s Points of View; other people’s Salads. And so, I might just try and leave it at home sometimes, go back to taking pictures of things with my eyes.