My iPhone has had this little problem ever since I got it – it doesn’t sync with my laptop. It never has. Whenever I plug it in, it asks me if I would like to “trust” this computer. MY computer (Yes, damn it, I said yes the last plug in as well, and put in the passcode to prove it!). Now, I got it in my head almost immediately that I would not be able to retrieve my phone memory if I went to the apple store to have it looked into; that they would do a factory reset and that would be it for years of obsessively preserved (and sometimes stolen) photos and other random virtual memorabilia. Did I ever actually go to to the apple store and find out my options? Nope. But somehow, every time this point of frustration has come up over the past year, I’ve treated it like some given part of life; some fixture that will never change as long as I own this phone – like when I dropped the 1000 dollars for the purchase I had also signed some very small dotted line agreeing to a couple years of growing pains.

I say that last part like a joke but in the end I actually had. My brain had jumped and jumped from mental block to mental block; skipped one mental hurdle just to trip over another, only to arrive at this absurd conclusion. And now? I’m the individual in possession of some really stodgy alternative facts simply because I refused to do my research. More absurd than that was the ease with which I allowed my brain convince me that I did not have the 30 minutes of energy or time to stop by the apple store on my way home from work one day to ask the question and perhaps get it fixed. Even more absurd, if one could believe it, is the certainty with which I accepted this fact. The phone trust issue became a “known” precept, something around which I had to adjust myself if I intended to feel more at ease. All it did was increase my resting sense of discomfort. Yet I knowingly (most days really on this subconscious level) and willingly allowed this to continue for a year. And there are so many other things and areas of my life that have lain dormant and unquestioned for eons past their season simply because of this passive mindset I’ve kept.

I say passive because it has surely not been something I’ve actively thought about in this manner. If I had earlier, perhaps I might already be a few steps down the road to remediation. It is, however, never too late. It’s just still crazy to me how we sometimes let ourselves be our own biggest blocks in what are, sometimes, the seemingly most innocuous ways. All we can hope for is discernment and the spirit to tell your goddamn lazy ass to get the hell up and keep pushing for you. To come through for you. To love you enough to BE you, fully exploring and realizing all that potential, all those possibilities. 

The hope is that we do this always; that we manage this without wasting accumulating minutes repeatedly telling one inanimate object to display the very animated, human emotion of trust for another similarly inanimate and decidedly non-human object. Over and over again. My God. What a bloody waste of time.