The struggles of being a social media addict.

You never realize how dependent you are on something until you no longer have access to it. Whether it's sugar or caffeine or crack or whatever it may be, you never realize how attached you are until you can't have it anymore. You start having those withdraws: the itching, the mind games, the anxiety. Well, for me that happens when I don't have my phone. My phone and I are attached at the hip. We're inseparable. We do everything together. When I wake up in the morning, I take a hit of my notifications bar. I check my emails and Twitter and Facebook before I even get out of bed. And throughout the day I'm constantly checking my sites, staying up to date on all the latest happenings, and I'm usually the first to know everything because of this. When I go to bed at night, I spend some quality time with my phone running the battery down as I refresh those apps one last time to make sure I didn't miss a beat before I go to sleep. And then I wake up and do it all again.

I realize how pathetic I may have just sounded, like maybe I have a serious problem. But realistically speaking, it's not that weird because it's my life. It's what I've chosen to study in school and what I've chosen to hopefully make a career out of. And I LIKE being addicted to it. I LIKE knowing what's going on the world, always being connected, seeing people's pictures on instagram, posting my own pictures on instagram, tweeting and retweeting constantly throughout the day. I enjoy my addiction to social media, so I don't see anything wrong with it.

That is, until some freak accident happens like today involving me, my phone, and a toilet. I think you all know where I'm going with this. I've done this once before with an old phone. I had it in my back pocket and when I pulled my pants down to go to the bathroom it fell in. Amateur mistake, and from that day on I never put my phone in my back pocket again. Lesson learned. Today, however (and don't think too hard about this, please) I had my phone clutched in what I thought was tightly in my hand when it JUMPED out and fell face first in the toilet. It jumped, people. So naturally I screamed, fished it out, and frantically started drying it off. Then amateur Chelsea made another appearance and tried to restart the phone immediately which caused it to fry the mother board. My stomach was in knots as I soaked it in a cup of rice (which did absolutely nothing, by the way) and hours later it refused to show any signs of life. It was completely and utterly dead.

I tried not to panic too much and instead tried to use it as an exercise in patience...which didn't really work out. I started seriously lashing out at pretty much everyone. I had to take a step back and remind myself that it's just a phone, and I could get through this when I remembered I had my computer! Yes, just the hit I needed to calm myself down. But it soon became apparent that it was not the same. So I gave in to my addiction and went to Sprint where they told me it was a lost cause and I could either go the next 3 months without a phone until our upgrade, or I could fork over $110 and get a refurbished piece of crap. So I had no choice. I went with the piece of crap.

#FirstWorldProblems 

I immediately began downloading my must-have apps: Facebook, Gmail, TweetDeck, Evernote, Shazam (gotta have that music ID), and Instagram. But wait, this new piece of crap phone doesn't support Instagram?! How is this possible? One of my most-used apps I just can't have for another 3 months until I upgrade?? I was (and still am) truly disappointed (and yes, I do realize how shallow and petty this sounds). And by the way, this was all happening while standing in the Sprint store with 1% battery life. That's how badly I couldn't wait to get my hands on a smart phone.

So I returned home with the refurbished, low quality, instagram-lacking phone around 5:00 and almost 3 hours later it is not even half way done charging. It's taking all I have to be patient and to give my addiction to social media a break for a while. It's been hard, it's been real hard. Not to mention, I lost a lot of stuff. Tons of saved pictures and meaningful voicemails and text messages are now gone forever. Maybe it was a sign that it's time to let some things go.

I'm trying to see this situation as a good thing. Because while I'm admittedly an addict, it's always nice to take a break and recenter my focus. Sometimes I get so wrapped up in all this that I forget there's an outside world. I need to spend some time doing other things instead of constantly relying on my phone for entertainment. I need to go outside and smell the fresh boiling hot air and go swimming or go for a walk and just give the phone a break. I have 3 months to go until I upgrade to an iPhone and probably take my addiction to a whole new level, so I've decided to not get too attached to this one and to use my time more wisely. I know that there's more important things in the world that I could be spending my time on, and I intend to let myself do that now.

It's funny how the world works. Something can make you so angry and frustrated and upset, but it can also teach you a lesson if you're willing to let it. And that's how I choose to look at this situation. One life lesson served in a toilet bowl.