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Dealing With Cell Hell
I really hate cell phones.
For one, I hate being beholden to other people. There’s something about my anxiety that doesn’t like having to call or initiate conversations with other people — it’s mildly better for a text message, but, even with those, there’s the expectation that I’m going to answer in close to real time.
I don’t like being at most peoples’ beck and call — and my coping mechanism for dealing with the world is to close my eyes and pretend that the problem isn’t there.
If I’ve learned anything in adulthood, is that the only solution to most problems is money. Not having money equals the problems not going away.
So, you have to understand, I’m already coming into this with apprehension. It seems patiently unfair that I need to purchase an expensive-ass device that I scarcely ever use.
But when you need the damn thing, you really need it.
And you want it to work well.
A few months before I moved back to Nevada, I signed up with Verizon’s pre-paid service. $45 a month for 3GB of data. Not great, exactly, but enough that I’d have a phone number for people to contact me at, and that I’d have data enough to use Google Maps for directions whenever I left. Not exactly fancy millennial behavior, but it worked.
