Losing the auld phone – Oh FFS!

Losing the auld phone – Oh FFS!

Wow oh wow did I ever think that a phone could be so important in our lives. Like today 2022, imagine like?

First off it is fair to say I have practiced over the years of cell phone usage of leaving my phone at home for a while during the day and I have left it turned off on the charger many times too. I use my phone for when I want to use it and when I have no use for it, it can stay or be wherever. No big deal really, I guess you could say I had a pretty healthy relationship with my phone as far as things go. I found it most handy for internet and social media posting and advertising my books through my social media accounts.

What I didn’t realise was how important the little thing had become to me. Like everything in our lives, we only figure it all out after it is gone. My phone was a good phone, it was starting to become a little outdated though it was still able to hold it’s own with the modern technology. I had the thing since 2016 and the phone had great memory space and abilities like I said. I think I paid a small fortune for it back at the time because it was new technology and super cool, which in fairness it was.

My phone I guess was like my mini computer in my hand. I know we all have them now and that they work just the same as a tablet or our computers. Yes for sure they do.

I have used my phone through Microsoft programs that came with and other programs I would have installed, I actually used my phone completely to create one of my books. “17 & Life” from beginning to end. I did have to use a pc to apply some final issues to the cover when it was launch day, other than that the entire book came about and was created in it’s entirety on my phone. As any writer will tell you when we lose our drafts or notes or any scribbles from our writing it is like losing a limb for a while.

The phone had the capabilities and with the programs and storage it had, well there was a lot of writing and my next book on it. That sucks!

Why didn’t I HAVE IT ALL BACKED UP RIGHT?

I answer this with hands up in the air and a shrug of my shoulders. I thought I had it all figured out didn’t I. My several accounts passwords all locked in and saved and my documents all in their rightful place and my files and images all again filed correctly and in their rightful place.

Categories for this and categories for that, I had pretty much many files dating back to 2016. Not an eternity I know, though a ton of “stuff”. As a writer now in my life it sucks that I had a stage play written there, a new book and 80% of a screen play. Will I manage through different accounts to find some sort of cloud memory storage somewhere and recover some? I sure hope so though I have not been able to figure any out yet so far. (Your advice greatly appreciated)

It is only a phone many people have said to me and it is better to have lost my phone than to have lost my life, yes this is true I suppose.

Still doesn’t mean it sucks any less.

So, why the big deal then?

Well, and I am choking up as I type it out. Me being so smart and so protective of my files and images and content, thinking I had everything where it needed to be right there in my phone. Oh yeah, me super smart and all, I did forget or have been complacent or absent minded. Nah, let me call it naïve, yeah that is the word, and my own naivety has left me furious over the stupid phone being gone.

Furious? How furious are we talking here?

I am not even sure, that is part of the whole entire madness around the fckinug phone being no more.

I lost files folks. I lost image files and video files that I have been saving for 11 and 8 years. Precious files so precious that I am quite upset about it. Upset to the stage of calling it furious with myself and only I for not having my special precious files more secure or backed up or whatever it is called.  I thought once my phone was with me then my files were safe and always available to me whenever I wanted to look at them and enjoy special moments by browsing pictures and replaying little videos that I had kept.

So why, were they not backed up? I do not know, like I said naivety is all I can come up with on that.

Is it possible that it has now become my time to leave go of old memories or my time to learn about external storage devices and multiple memory cards or SD cards? I guess. The importance of them is now glaringly obvious.

Why write this post today?

It is not to bring you into my own misery of feeling unhappy about the loss of my photos and files and video clips, nope that is not it.

I am sharing this with you to encourage you to get all your photos and precious memories or moments and get them onto a little USB thing or invest in an external hard drive and download from your phone as often as you can. Believe it or not some of that bullshit you keep on your phone is valuable to you and to you only and if and when it should ever go, it is gone forever. I write this evening to alert you to take a major step and back your stuff up, like right now!

I can do more writing and better my craft and recreate the things I lost in my documents folders. Some older important notes and invoices and stuff from previous clients, they are gone. Not worth worrying about them though. I encourage you always to go out and keep on making memories. I encourage you to record them and capture them and get them somewhere safe other than your phone. A water damaged phone for example means all your stuff unless backed up is gone. It is that simple as I have been finding out. I write it out and hear myself saying “it is that simple” when it really is not.

How on earth will I ever get back the little video clip I had of Darra playing football in a final that one day? I won’t.

How will I get back that little video clip of Patrick sticking out his tongue and how amazed he was discovering that he could do it? I won’t.

Now as I am writing this I am realising that I just won’t get them back.

This is my current battle at the moment. Angry and frustrated and furious and sad and naïve all rolled into one big ball.

Yes I do write many posts that refer to being kind to yourself and to go easy on yourself and keep a nice even calm balance and check in on your mental health. I am a strong advocate for learning to relax your mind and regain focus. Mental health is a big one because of some of my former anguish and despair experienced in my life. It is not that my children have grown up and I will never recover these little keep sake memories of them in their younger years. It really is because they have both died and I had no more opportunities to get more clips and photos and footage.

My mental health though, right? Yes indeed. I suppose there is some form of a blessing that I will not sit up late at night and into the early hours of the morning crying to myself watching their faces go across my screen in the way in which I have done only a few dozen million times over the years. It has been suggested to me that perhaps these images and footage have been something blocking me from something greater and I have remained “stuck” for quite a number of years and now that these items are gone, that perhaps I have been freed for better things ahead. It is possible, I suppose, who can really tell the future though? It is now that it sucks, it is now where I live. Yes they were merely images and the likes and were of the past. I did not dwell in those times of the yesteryear nor did I live way back there. I just found comfort and happiness sometimes through my tears for them and for me.

I suggest to you again very strongly to “back your sh1t up”.

I am at a loss for the items that are now gone and am once again gonna find out the hard way how to pick myself up and get stronger and tougher once again. Yup once again!

I remember with my book “TWO sons TOO many” driving a strong message of create memories with your loved ones and learn of how I have buried two of my sons and that I began to understand how precious our time really is. I learned what it was all about beginning to rebuild myself emotionally after the loss of Darra and then to be flattened all over again with Patrick dying within a few years. Talk about a bitch of a time.

Well I know how to rebuild myself and how to begin again; I have become a professional at it at this stage. Does it make it any easier? At this moment in time? Not really. No more pining for their smiles and their touch any more by browsing old photos.

I did not lose them all of course, I have some on different memory sticks and things, and I simply do not have my favourites anymore.

Will I even post this blog post? I am not even sure because of how I feel right now. That is what got me in to this writing stuff in the first place, a way in which to write out and go through how I am feeling and thinking all at the same time.

Loss of any kind is a super bitch of all bitches. Loss of near and dear items can mess with us just as much as anything.

Save your precious memories and back stuff up. Seriously though.

Imagine what my phone actually meant to me though. Do not be like me and lose some of your most precious memories. Do not be like me and have a phone that you do not even understand how much it means to you. Use the thing for phone calls and social media browsing and let that be the end of it. Forget about shelling out thousands for a phone and having the greatest model yet. A bit of a soaking and it is all wiped out. And then to think about how the storage devices and clouds and memory sticks and stuff are so much cheaper than the all tech great new phones anyway.

A phone for a couple of hundred and a thousand or two spent on extra memory devices are so much better value. Oh yeah, I know it all now after the fact, do not be like me and get the memories saved and stored somewhere that you can access them for the rest of your life.

End of the advice for today. Have a wonderful week and bring on this winter. I am as ready as I will ever be. Let’s do this shit!

@TWOsonsTOOmany