Hopelessly Addicted

Like most twenty-somethings, I am hooked to my cell phone. But worse, I'm hooked to constantly and compulsively checking my work email on my phone WHEN I'M NOT AT WORK.

This means I check my phone as soon as I wake up, while I'm waiting for my straight iron to heat up, while I'm brushing my teeth, while I'm in the car putting my seat belt on, while I'm driving (bad, shh), and then, at the end of the day as soon as I get in my car to go home, I check it again! As if I missed anything from the 5 seconds it took me to walk to my car and while everyone else on my team is on their way out the door, too. Ridiculous. And then, like clockwork, as soon as I walk into my house, I check my email again, and then while I'm cooking dinner, after dinner, before I go to bed, just before I go to bed, etc ... see how bad I am?

Because, what if there's something urgent from my boss? What if I'm desperately needed at 11:27pm? Or, what if that Newsweek reporter I've been trying to reach for months and months finally gets back to me???? It could happen, you never know; he could be struck at any moment with an epiphany and be like, "Oh my gosh, yes, that's what I want the topic of my next cover story to be about! I better email PR Working Girl asap, her story ideas are on fire!"

... Sigh.

Granted, there have been a few times when being able to check email remotely has been a good thing, but it's seriously not often enough to justify this madness. How can I stop? And is there any kind of scientific reasoning to my unexplainable OCD-like need to always be connected? Is it a phone habit thing maybe, and not really a need-to-know-what's-going-on-at-work thing? Maybe there are drugs being emitted from the phone waves. And just for the record, me being employed at a cell phone company has nothing to do with it. This is just simply a real life epidemic, yes?