6.28.2013

Life Without A Phone

Last week as I was heading down to Lake Powell with my family, I realized I'd misplaced my phone. I realized this as our entire group was departing from some random parking lot in Draper- not even 15 miles from my parent's house- the last place I'd remembered seeing my phone. Of course, I was in a dead panic and began dumping everything from my purse and my beach bag and stuffing my hands into every nook and cranny in my dad's truck. Nope. No luck. "No problem." I thought. We'll just turn around and head back to the house where I was sure it was. Nope again. My dad was not about to turn around and abandon the rest of our group for my phone. I wanted to cry. How was I going to survive the next five days of my trip? No phone, no camera, no Spotify, no Instagram & Facebook. I was already upset, 20 minutes into our family trip. Not to mention the fact that I was going to have to admit to Cardy that I had actually lost my phone. Sure, I'd misplaced it before, mostly in my house but I'd never lost, lost a phone.

After some quick thinking, I called my friend, Ashley, and pretty much begged her to stop by my parent's house to see if I had left the phone sitting on the counter or to check if it was laying in the street where we had been loading the truck and boat. She was awesome and ran right over, despite her and her family trying to leave for the same boating trip. Unfortunately, she didn't find anything.

I must have re-traced my steps in my head a hundred times. I could remember the last time I looked at my phone (to check a text message) but I could not remember what I did after that. I tried calling the phone, I tried calling Verizon to see if they could locate it with GPS (they can't...whatever.) but I didn't know what else I could do from Lake Powell.

At some point that first day I had to let it go. There was nothing I could do about it so I wasn't going to spend the rest of my trip sulking. It was hard. I felt very disconnected and it made me realize just how much I rely on my phone for everything. I use it as my camera, alarm clock, calendar, organizer, music device, social media connection, email, etc. This sucked. I had to rely on my family to let me borrow their phone to call home & I was forced to listen the only 10 songs my brother had on his phone. I even went so far as to put the Instagram app on my mom's iPhone so I could try not to miss out from afar. For you Sprint users, I'm sorry. You're service sucks. My mom's phone could barely function in Page, AZ so checking Instagram regularly was a bust.

All is well in the world now. This week I was able to use the insurance I had on my phone and I now have a new phone. It's the same brand I had before- Samsung Galaxy S3 (yes, I'm an Android girl). Who knows what happened to my lost phone. It was probably smashed to smithereens on the road somewhere near my parent's house.

Here's what I learned in the whole week I was without a phone:
*I'm glad I have insurance on my phone- & one that covers lost/stolen phones (not all do).
*I'm thankful I didn't have any bank info or financial information on my phone- even though I don't think it was stolen, you never know.
*I'm thankful I didn't have any nudie pics currently on my phone.
*I don't give as big of a crap about Facebook as I thought. However, Instagram is another story!
*Always put a tracking app on your phone. You have to be proactive about it because once it's lost, you're screwed.
*Verizon can sell your info to the NSA and social media apps can use the GPS on your phone to track your location but if you lose your phone, your sources are mute. No one can help you.
*Back up Assistance is a bust. Thank you BUA for only saving my contacts in the most ridiculous order imaginable. It was weird discovering Cardy's phone number was now listed as "Email" in my backed up contents. It's a mess. I lost pics, videos, calendar, and other organization trackers I had on my phone. I was so sad. iPhone users have the iCloud but it's no good unless you save things to it. I'm thinking about using DropBox.
*Who knew the police will actually write up a case report for a lost/stolen phone? My insurance required this and I was totally embarrassed calling the police department to report my lost/stolen phone (saying stolen made me feel better about). What a waste of their time!
*I actually survived. I wasn't as disconnected to the world as I thought- I just didn't have all my guilty pleasures at the tip of my fingers. Living without social media, Google and a personal phone is possible.