Despite having literally every other feature imaginable, from a sun roof to various hidden compartments, my car does not have bluetooth. Since it is a 2016, most people are shocked when I tell them this. I myself am still kind of shocked when I tell people this.

Not having bluetooth, has never bothered me though. I always have my phone set on driving focus and my notifications disabled. I can still connect my phone to the speakers via aux cord and typically, just listen to podcasts or whatever album is the subject of my weekly discussion group.

However, I’ve always had in the back of my mind, a dream about doing car ride phone calls.

Let me explain.

Five years ago, I read the book Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport and loved it. In the book, Newport profiles many different people and their many different approaches to being online, from eschewing it entirely, to crafting various different limits to control its usage. As you can imagine, there were lots of eccentric people and eccentric suggestions for how to best manage and craft meaningful social connections. I implemented some of these suggestions in my life, like deleting social media apps off your phone and only redownloading them when you go to post. I failed at implementing other of these suggestions in my life, like having a set time each day for using social media.

However, there was one person that Newport profiled, that when I read his story, I went “I want to do that” but never actually tried to do so.

I have absolutely no memory of what this person’s name was, only that he was very successful business executive, who had very little time to waste. Yet, maintaining the many relationships in his life was something he valued and wanted to make a priority.

So here is what he decided to do. Each day, the executive had an approximately hour long commute from 5PM to 6 PM. During each commute, he scheduled time with a different family member, friend, or colleague and just talked to them while driving. Sometimes, depending on the person, they talked about specific thing or business dealing. But, most of the time, the chats were unstructured, his goal with them simply to connect and mantain his relationship with the person who he was talking to.

I’ve wanted to copy this executive idea for years. And each year, as the New Year rolls around, I’ve told myself that I’m going to write this blog post.

Now five years later, I’m finally doing so. Here’s why.

In many ways, winter is my favorite part of being a park ranger. The park I work at is pretty much empty, which means I can devote myself primarily to projects big and small, many of which are fun. I don’t mind the cold, as I’ve found that as long as you are wearing good clothing and keep moving, winter is the best time to work outside.

Yet, there is one part of being a park ranger in winter that I find at times challenging. During winter weekends, I work completely alone most of the time.

Now, as someone who can be super productive by myself, in many ways this is often great. By myself, I can focus on the projects I need to get done, organize my day how I want, and then go about getting them done in the most efficient way possible. At the end of a winter day, I’m often pleasantly suprised by how many wide and varied things that I was able to accomplish in ten hours.

However, working by myself on a weekend in a typically empty park, also means that I sometimes go the ten hours without talking to anyone. And then I drive home and don’t talk to anyone. And then I go to work the next day and chances are, I don’t talk to anyone that day too, save for perhaps a “Hi” or “Good Morning” to the occassional walker or a “Ok, I can fix that” to a cabin renter when something breaks.

And then there are, what in my opinion are the loneliest days of winter, Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend and Presidents Day weekend. If I’m working these weekends, then it’s three days without typically talking to anyone. These weekends are usually followed by days off which, if I don’t have anything planned, then I also typically don’t talk to anyone.

Now, I’ve always joked that I have reverse seasonal depression, as I’m much more tired out by the chaos and unrepentent heat of summer. And again, in many ways winter is my favorite time of year. But, I have to be honest and admit that these winter weekends have been hard at times.

I am in the midst of a bit of a life reset at the moment and I am determined to make this winter different than prior ones. This has entailed making sure I am socializing on my days off, whether that’s run club or being at the makerspace or trivia. For the weekends that I am off, I have fun plans for every one. And I decided to put my foot down and finally make my dream of after work phone calls come true.

However, as previously mentioned, my car doesn’t have bluetooth. Then, this summer, the aux port on my phone stopped working. Since my phone was still little over a year old at this point and still worked fine, I’ve decided not to get a new one until something else breaks on it.

And then, since I no longer had my phone connected to my car stereo, something magical happened. This fall, I realized that if I put my phone in particular spot on my dashboard and put my phone on speaker, it’s pretty much the same as having bluetooth. I can talk and drive while the person on the other end hears me just fine.

My dream of after work phone calls was realized.

For my first one, I talked my whole commute home and it was so much fun and provided such a nice end to the day/something to look forward to! And I’ve done some more since with a handful of people.

Now, I want to talk to more people.

But, as I’m sure many of you, there seems to be a stigma against phone calls these days. Like you are only supposed to call family members or really close friends. I feel like that if I call someone up out of the blue they’ll either A.) Think it is an emergency or B.) Not answer.

I want to change this stigma and at the same time combat my winter, park ranger loneliness.

Here’s what I want to do. I have friends 595 on Facebook and 316 followers on Instagram. Now, I’m not one of those people who says social media friends aren’t real friends. If we are friends on any sort of social media platform then I am happy that you have been in someway apart of my life.

And, whatever our relationship, I would be happy to have a phone call with you to catch-up.

My phone number is 804-466-1569.