Looks like my good luck streak is coming to an ignoble end. Nothing has gone right for me since Thursday of last week. Monday and yesterday were the flat-our worst, and it all came to a head when my phone had a mental breakdown and died.
I use technology for a very long time. I use cellphones until they literally can't function anymore. But I've only had this one since, what, 2021? That's not long at all, which suggests to me that planned obsolescence is even worse than it was previously.
I was at work when my phone turned itself off, then on again. Off and on again. Off and on. And it wouldn't stop cycling. I tried to get it to stop, and I even looked up ways to troubleshoot it online. All those methods failed. It sucked extra because the software I use to answer phones at work stopped working, and I had to reboot my computer.
I'm sure you can figure out how well that went.
Thankfully there was a way to backdoor my way in without using my phone, but all the same, it was rough. Because I reacted very poorly to it. I actually panicked. I didn't just need my phone to work, I fucking needed it to work. My mind raced, and later, on my 76 minute drive home from the Verizon store, listening to terrestrial radio because I forgot my Spotify login, I realized that I was very familiar with this feeling.
It felt exactly like it did when I underestimated the amount of booze I'd need to knock me out for the night. How could I have finished that bottle? What the fuck? Do I have another here somewhere? One I've forgotten? Wait, there's an airplane bottle around here. There's gotta be. WHERE THE FUCK IS IT?!
That oftentimes happened at three in the morning. Corner Cottage stayed open later than the other liquor stores in town, but even they were closed at that time.
I didn't like that realization about myself. Not just that it reminded me of what it was like back in those days, but also because it showed me that despite all the precautions I'd taken with my phone, I'm addicted to it.
At the Verizon store I was advised that the motherboard was fried. It would cost more to fix it than it was worth, and I'd lose everything. "But I can get you a deal for $300 off a new phone." I think it was three hundred. My brain was kind of fried, too.
One of the reasons Monday was so miserable was because I'd forgotten about my annual bill for my website, and it just about wiped out my bank account. All the money I'd put in my savings since I got to my new apartment? Gone except for about twenty-ish bucks.
So when the clerk told me that, I thought about all the things I do with this phone. And I realized exactly how free I'd be if I gave up all of them in one go, like a man who, instead of having one last drink of booze before quitting, pours out the rest of the bottle instead. It would hurt. I knew it would. I force myself to not check my phone constantly, and I thought I was beating it by doing that. Surprise! I should have listened to the recent study. I can't find it now, but it stated that a cellphone doesn't have to be used to cause a decline in productivity. It's very presence next to you is enough to do that. I read about it in Arnold's Pump Club. I'll have to go through the archives.
At any rate, I told the clerk, "I'm not going to get a new phone." I explained that I'd get by with a TracFone for emergencies only. I didn't need the other stuff. "I think I'm addicted to this thing. I'm going to let this set me free."
Three cheers for me, yes?
Eh . . . no.
She said that they actually had a trade in promotion, that I'd get a new phone for free. There was just a fee (because of course there was) of $40. So I buckled like a belt and got the new phone. And she got the price down to $29. I luckily had cash in my wallet.
She was very nice and helpful. I'm casting no aspersions on her. But I do have to marvel at the fact that all I had to say was, hey, I'm going to free myself from the tyranny of this tech, and suddenly a phone that cost who knew how much was suddenly down to $29 and change.
By the way, when I got my new phone up and running, none of the pictures survived. I lost all of those. Which is a shame because I had some real quality memes on there.
Clearly my watchful eye wasn't good enough. Now I'm going to have to be super vigilant in my phone use. For example, when I eat out at restaurants with friends, my phone is no longer going on the table next to me. It's staying in my pocket. No more looking at it on commercial breaks. I will find something else to do with my time, because I'm certainly not watching commercials. (And yes, I did forget that terrestrial radio has 10 minute commercial breaks, why do you ask?) I want to not have it next to me when I write, but I often times need to look shit up, and the computer I write on isn't connected to the internet. I'll have to think more about that one. You get the idea.
You might want to think about your own phone usage. You know my feelings about our corporate overlords and what they're doing to us. These phones are, without a doubt, mind control devices. Look up "necessary evil" on Wikipedia, and you'll find a picture of the cellphone. Just a suggestion. I don't know you, but if you're reading my stuff, I have a suspicion you like to think of your mind as your own, not the property of a corporation. As my sci-fi PI used to say, "It's something to consider."
Oh, one more thing. Looks like DeKalb is where radio signals from Chicago start to die. Just about everything I listened to was on the brink of fading out.
It occurs to me that if we did, indeed, suffer a zombie apocalypse we wouldn't make it as far as any of those idiots on The Walking Dead. As soon as we ran out of ways to power our phones, we'd have gone out of our fucking minds. Sure, maybe a handful of Jeremiah Johnsons would be out there, living off the grid, but the majority of us? Not a chance.
