I’m not sure what I thought might happen the day I forgot my smartphone but it made me confront my addiction to it—how the phone both makes me worse and, surprisingly, better.

Six-months into smartphone ownership, my elbow has a scroll-angle twinge, and I’ve grown furtive about my dependency on it, around Chris, who is more apt to be working on a crossword or reading a book than checking his phone. He does nothing to inspire guilt but the simple fact that he can tune out the jangle of a text makes me feel it.

My phone makes me less likely to engage in one of our wide-ranging, after-dinner conversations, and more likely to stay up late.

I haven't finished a single book this summer, or touched an embroidery project. I’m falling behind on my weekly blog posts and didn’t get a postcard in the mail on vacation. Instagram is the culprit. I’m busy communing with people in Japan and Germany and Turkey, who paint on rocks and take pictures of clouds. I’m following my cousin’s lovely canoe trip in the Boundary Waters.

Halfway to work, I nevertheless considered turning around and biking three miles home to retrieve it. As soon as I arrived at the office, I emailed Chris and our son Ingo to let them know I’d forgotten my smartphone as if it was a national emergency—and then felt foolish.

What could they possibly need from me? Chris often leaves his phone home anyway. Ingo may need help with the odd rental form, or tax form, but has had a real emergency only once in his 21 years, when he fell off his skateboard, and it was his friends who rushed him to the emergency room, not me.

Besides, I work in an office with a landline—surely my savvy family could find me if they really needed to.

Yet I don’t want the phone only for emergencies. The portability of the camera has also made me more attentive to many moments of my day, like the row of Linden trees along the edge of a soccer field on my ride to work, or the pigeons on a wall overlooking the Hudson River. I notice them all the more because I stop, snap and post them on Instagram.

And scrolling through other peoples' pictures reinforces for me what I like, and have always liked, but often forget I like, such as block printing on fabric, embroidery, canoeing and reading.

That's why I want to gain more control over my smartphone this fall. I'd like to funnel all this newfound inspiration into action—plan a printmaking day or embroider a pillow or read an entire book.

With that in mind, I thought I'd build on the day of accidental forgetting with purposeful forgetting now and then, to get used to being without my phone just to prove I can. For a start, I leave it in the office on my one-hour lunchtime walks around Washington Square Park with my friend Carol. Already, I like how it simplifies things. I can’t send a “5 min late” text anymore. I have to be at the meeting place at our agreed upon time.

My bigger goal this fall is to stay offline during Chris’s and my five-hour Sunday walks to free me up to be more available for conversation, sewing and reading on the subway to and from our destination. During our coffee stop, instead of checking email or "likes," I want to write a postcard to my mom.

What I know I'll miss most on a phoneless walk is the ability to snap a moment, like the one above, to savor and share. But then, I can share it here, can't I? By using the Lumix camera I use for work, thus skirting many online temptations.

It’s back-to-school time, the season of fresh starts. Now and then, when I can, I want to free up my hands and mind.