My iPhone Broke & So Did My Sense Of Humour.
Yes I do always change my background to match the seasons.
**This is a wordy one, I think I've gone on a bit of a rant.
On Monday afternoon, on my 24th birthday my iPhone broke. Not in a catastrophic smashed up way. Not in a it completely just died way. Just in a well that's just not working right and that's pretty annoying kinda way. The worst way.
It just kinda slowed down and died. It turned on fine, for all intents and purposes it worked fine but it just didn't have any signal..... And I couldn't find any. I tried switching it on and off, I tried resetting a bunch of stuff, I tried airplane mode, I tried ringing people to force it to get a bar but nothing.....
Because it was my birthday and I had my niece and was busy I didn't have much time to actually faff with it on Monday, I put it down to just a random burst of lack of signal but then in the evening I dropped my niece off at her grandparents and went for a meal and went to my grandparents and still nothing.... Later that night I went home to Joss' and still nothing.
My main problem is I live in the arse end of nowhere and technicians are always surprised we can get a phone or wifi signal out here anyway so we really struggle to prove there's a problem and tbh I did originally put it to down just a dodgy signal. But as time cracked on and as Monday turned into Tuesday and I was now at my cleaning job with STILL nothing I started to think it might be playing up. It just didn't seem right, all the tricks I use to regain signal weren't working and all the hotspots I normally put it in to get a bar just weren't happening.
Sadly my network wouldn't speak to me until I'd tried taking the sim out and cleaning it and starting again but ya know when my little pin for the phone was? At my Mum's about 20 minutes away from where I was. So off me and my little car popped to get it and - surprise it didn't work. Obvs couldn't phone my network off my broken phone so a nice long call to an 0800 number on my house phone has really pleased Mumma and they said the next thing to try was a replacement sim card. Which would take up to 5 working days to arrive. Cute.
The guy on the phone suggested that in the meantime as I obviously wouldn't have a working phone that I might want to take it to my local store and see if they could test it (this was after he suggested putting my sim in another handset cos naturally, I have 2 iphones). Off I saunter down to my local store, a round trip of an hour only to be told by the advisor in the shop that he couldn't do anything because the telephone engineer had sent out a new sim. Beyond me. Safe to say I really didn't need the agg and my car certainly didn't need to use the petrol to get me down there to be told that.
So I could do nothing but wait for the simcard to arrive which of course was sent to my parents house which meant having to waste petrol again going to collect it when it arrived on Friday (praise the sweet baby Jesus it wasn't 5 working days). In the meantime as it slowly fucked up it also decided it's connection to the wifi was just a waste of time and that killed itself too. So no Instagram. No tweets. No whatsapp with my baes. No texting. No phonecalls. It was essentially a slightly shite camera. And I massively lost my sense of humour.
Luckily the new simcard **seems** (pray4me) to have fixed it and I have signal and a wifi connection but a mere 5 days without a phone made me realise just how much I rely on it. You only appreciate something when it's gone amiright?
It might be a first world problem that my iPhone which I bought outright (admittedly it's a refurb, ain't got dollah for a 700 quid phone pal), with a cheap ass contract for a lot of goodies broke and I couldn't get a connection to my wifi or god forbid my 4G. I feel a bit like Kim K crying about her diamond earrings and Kourtney being like 'people are dying in the world' but when you live in a privileged Western society, these kind of dramas DO impact on your life even though you know it's a small fish in a very big pond of woes. I also had a cold which did very little to bring me out of my funk.
But being disconnected is unusual for us and I don't like it. I could be like it was nice to have a break and I got lots done without my phone pinging with notifications all the time and in some ways that's true but in all honesty? Nah, save your social media breaks and detox time, it just ain't for me. The connected life is the one I want to live and if I CHOOSE to log off I will.
Let's be real here, I'm paying £7.50 a month on my phone contract because I plain don't need the minutes or the texts. It's not like my phone is ringing off the hook, I mainly use it for calling my parents, my boyfriend, my grandparents, my brother and my niece's family but NOT having the option was a whole other ball game. I kept picking it up to just text one of them something I'd remembered or needed to ask. My boyfriend works shifts as a carer and isn't home till very late at night and not being able to receive texts or calls from him to let me know he was heading home so I could make some tea for him, or let me know he was back safe and sound when I wasn't there was weird. And driving freaked me out a bit. We live in a very very rural area and finding yourself with a flat from a pothole or stuck in a flood is not uncommon and it made me quite uneasy knowing if I were to break down in the lanes, where the nearest house is a few miles away I'd be unable to call breakdown cover let alone my own family.
And as the wifi failed slowly I realised just how much I rely on my iPhone for my business. As well as blogging I am a freelance illustrator and whilst people joke that I'm constantly contactable because I'm always on my phone, 90% off my business is done that way. Sure I could use my desktop or my laptop or even my iPad because I am the definition of an Apple wanker but it was the instant access I missed and what I struggled with the most.
Having to physically log into my emails (which when you run 6 gmail accounts and a hotmail is a ball ache to say the least), physically check Twitter, know your Instagram is dying without you....just things that were once instant notifications on my phone were things I had to actively remember to do. And I hated it.
So yes I managed and yes I coped and no it's not the worst 5 days of my little life but ya know what, it was a bit of a nightmare and I'm keeping everything crossed this new babe of a simcard had sorted it out for good.
I am a tech addict. I'm an internet addict. I'm a social media addict. And I don't think I'm alone.