Last year at this time, I reflected on my first anniversary of owning my mobile phone by providing some usage stats.
Now that I’ve owned the phone for two years, I thought it might be fun to compile the stats for this past year (2005-2006) and then compare them to last year’s. Here we go:
| Last year (2004-2005) | This year (2005-2006) | TOTAL | |
| TOTAL CALLS | 3,205 | 1,869 | 5,074 |
| CALLS PER DAY | 8.7 | 5.12 | 6.95 calls per day |
| TOTAL TALK TIME | 125 hours, 0 minutes, 13 seconds | 82 hours, 33 minutes, 7 seconds | 207 hours, 33 minutes, 20 seconds |
| TALK TIME PER DAY | 20 minutes | 14 minutes | 17 minutes |
| DAYS ON PHONE | 5.2 straight days | 3.4 straight days | 8.6 straight days |
Any reason for the sharp decline in phone usage over the past year? Different work? Worse phone? One yakky friend move to Asia? The stats cry out for just a line or two of explanation.
I’m with Steve. If I was to guess, I bet relationship status has something to do with the change.
Steve, Ed,
Thanks for the comments. You’re both right- Steve, I should’ve explained.
Ed, you’re right- there was a change in a relationship; just not a personal one.
In 2004/2005, I had a reasonably successful book, and that meant nearly endless hours on the phone with publishers, publicists, and related professionals. That was a long-distance relationship if there ever were one, as I reside in Maine and most of the media world works out of New York.
When my book faded in 2005/2006, my phone time dropped as a direct and measurable result of not needing to be on the phone to New York many times per day.