Dear Readers, I am ashamed to admit it, but I love my IPhone…..

I have a checkered past when it comes to technology. I never really liked it much until the day I got my IPhone. I was working for Apple at the time June 29, 2007 and got it for free (my favourite word) and was all set to sell it as passage for my trip to France but just a few clicks of the button I saw how intuitive it was and how easy it was to use to check email and facebook and of course stay in touch with my nearest and dearest and it was fait accompli, and quell dommage, I did not make that trip but I had made a new friend.

It sounds weird and feels even weirder to call your phone your friend but how else can you explain the sorrow I felt Monday when upon trying to charge my phone getting a red lightning bolt and it felt hot to the touch and no charge to boot which means the phone doesn’t work. Let me say that again, it doesn’t work, which means you can’t call or email or facebook or tweet or use a GPS to get places or look up your calendar to see what you are scheduled to do!

I am suddenly and acutely aware how much I use the phone to plan my day and get from point A to point B and to stay in touch. I do a fair bit of troubleshooting in my day to day life so I will tell you I tried several things. I tried taking the Kermit case off, and getting the charger more firmly seated and then turning it off all night – I also held it against the vent of my air conditioner to cool it off and then trying to charge it and that seemed to work but as soon as I took it off the charger it dropped from 100 to 68 and 31 and 24 and 2. A truly disheartening moment as you realize you are back to square one after 10 minutes!

So I took it to the Apple Store where the “geniuses” (even when I worked for Apple, I thought that was a LOT of pressure to put on one person) told me my battery is toast. I do not qualify for an upgrade as I did not buy the extended warranty. At the time, that seemed like a good call, as I pocketed the extra money and simply spent the 50.00 on my upgrade from Iphone3 to Iphone4s … way after it came out because let’s be clear here, I am NOT an early adopter and the idea of moving to a 5 doesn’t appeal to me let alone a 6. They said I need a new battery but it will take an hour to install, I don’t have that kind of time and I say I will come back another day.

I had to marvel at the irony as we all sat patiently at the tables waiting for our diagnosis (we make it sound so serious too!)  all the people with broken Ipad and Iphonage all were talking to each other, not texting, tweeting, facebooking zombies so as a fan of socializing that made me happy and it also caused an epiphany in me. Despite taking a few “unplugged” days off in July, I am rarely without my phone. That is a sobering thought, how much of my life am I missing because I am posting about it. I think I am more mindful than most but could always stand to improve in this arena.

So moving forward, I will seek to plug in more to people not my devices.

Think about it……..