On June 7, I spent 24 hours with no cellphone service.

At first, I was aggravated, but I quickly realized no calls or texts might not be such a bad thing. I guess that prepared me for five days later when many of us experienced similar conditions.

Before I spend the whole column sharing about technology woes, though, let me share some of my last week.

This week was another meeting related to the construction of a new Seymour Fire Department headquarters. Many have been working hard to make our way through the process of a new fire station. Each week, we inch closer to having a design ready and all of the boxes checked to move to the construction phase. Thank you to everyone who continues to plug away on this project seeing it to completion.

Speaking of fire, my recent department visit was with the Seymour Fire Department. I had a chance to observe as they worked one of the new hires through various training scenarios preparing him for a long career. Items that I had heard about on previous visits I got to witness for myself and get a better understanding along the way. Continue with the training, SFD. Every practice run makes it easier when the real call comes in.

Thank you to the Seymour Evening Lions Club for inviting me out to speak to your group. It was a good chance to talk about my favorite subject, Seymour. I recapped the 15 future items from State of the City a few months ago. Some of those items have already been completed, and others will take several years to get done.

I enjoyed updating members along with discussing random topics that came up during the question session. If you have a group you would like me to speak at, just reach out and we will see if we can find a time that works.

Well, back to that opening thought on technology. Many of us had a chance to break away from our phones recently even if we didn’t want to.

My first chance was with Verizon deciding my account and several others didn’t need to be in service. At first, I was not happy about it, but pretty quickly, I realized it was a chance to not get phone calls and text messages for a period of time. That doesn’t happen very often in my day-to-day life anymore. The 24 hours or so that I had no service was peaceful and a good chance to enjoy being disconnected.

Then as quickly as it had started, it was over, and life was back to normal. Following that up a few days later, phones and internet decided to crash for a few hours.

I hope when you find yourself without service like this you can remember to go enjoy the outside world. Maybe if that doesn’t work, you can think of grabbing a good book and getting some long overdue reading in. Maybe even jump in the car and go visit with your family that you haven’t sat and chatted with for a while.

Turn of the century author Gertrude Stein said, “Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.”

We carry a world of information around in our pocket, and as the world of information fails from time to time, I hope you will remember to use your common sense and enjoy the moment as a chance to do something you may not regularly do.

Matt Nicholson is the mayor of Seymour. Send comments to [email protected].