(written on the 31st)
I gave an inch. Slipped a mile.
😕
I knew I shouldn’t have given an inch. I was… dragging today. I think I didn’t sleep well last night–didn’t get enough sleep. I slept on the side of the road in a neighborhood behind a large hedge.
I didn’t want to bother anybody, so I got there I think it like 1:30 or 2:00 in the morning? I don’t remember at this point. I probably wrote in yesterday’s post. And then I think I got up about 5:45 to drive over to the Walmart parking lot to be there about the time they opened, so no one would care that I was there either.
So then I took a nap in the Walmart parking lot for… hours…
Oh! One thing I didn’t mention that happened yesterday, something I didn’t mention on purpose because my mom regularly reads these posts. 🙃
I met a guy at the Planet Fitness lobby last night before I went in to without. Why did I meet him? Well, because he had a phone listed for sale that I wanted to get for my mom. It was a lot more than I wanted to spend, but I figured if my mom paid for as much as she had budgeted for a new but relatively inexpensive phone, and I paid the rest, then she could have a flagship-level phone as her new phone. 😁
So I meet him in the Rogers Planet Fitness entrance area, handed the dude some cash, and bought my mom a basically brand new Google pixel 8 pro.
🥳
The guy had won the phone in some kind of drawing, I think, directly from Google, and I was able to get it at a really good price. It was brand new, only powered on once, but never actually used, in pristine condition, and it came with a screen protector and a case that he’d also won.
🥳
So now, my poor mom, who’s been dealing with a super outdated phone with so little physical memory available that she’s been continually removing apps and files onto an external drive just so her phone can keep running even somewhat decently, now has a flagship phone that’s only one-year-old technology.
🥳
She won’t have any more issues with lack of space and ridiculous Samsung ads and annoyances.
🥳
It’s taken a good long while to finally get her a phone, but, crossing my fingers, this should be a really good one, even allowing her to take really good pictures, I hope, because of the super good image stabilization features that will be able to still take great pictures even with her hands shaking as they do.
🤞
So that was last night. After working out, I found that little spot on the side of the road, crashed for the night, well, for a few hours, then crashed over at the Rogers Walmart Supercenter for a little while, before heading to the gym for some workout time.
After a shorter-than-usual workout, I headed up to the Bentonville LDS stake center that doubles as a distribution center.
My mom volunteers there, and she’d gone to participate in an endowment session in the temple, and then gone out to lunch with her friends, so I drove up to the parking lot to wait for her, so I could help her with the transition from her old phone to her new phone.
Part of the reason I say that I took five steps back today was that I think maybe last night and during the day today I wasted time on non-uplifting things. I wasted time on things that are escapes.
I even had the thought that if I did that I was going to lose the precious positive feelings that I had been enjoying, but I did it anyway, and I did indeed lose quite a bit, most of it, in fact.
Then, in my efforts to get my mom’s phone all set up, I accidentally damaged the protective screen that goes over the main phone screen. It’s just superficial, and it’s probably not going to ever be any kind of an issue, but I wanted it to be perfect, and now part of the screen protector has a little bubble of air under it, probably about half the size of a penny.
I wanted it to be perfect for her. 😕
So I think between not getting enough sleep, not getting any just answer work done when I was really needing to make some progress there, allowing myself to escape into time-wasting things, and then botching the screen protector install, I just… Slipped back into the negative, heavy feeling.
😞
Darn it.
My mom was totally cool about the imperfect screen protector installation, and the resultant bubble that will never go away.
I found out later that it was like a $60 screen protector. 😶
Which made me feel doubly or quadrupley bad about it because instead of it just being a little $5 screen protector, it was a real beast of a screen protector.
[sigh]
Oh well.
It was nice to finally be able to get my mom a good phone, and not just a good phone, but a really really really good phone.
I don’t think she’s ever had a top-of-the-line-level phone, so it’s kind of fun for me to be able to help her get one that’s on the luxury end, so to speak. So that was a pretty good positive, even though I let myself drown a bit in my installation error and everything else.
After getting my mom taken care of, I think I headed over to the Bentonville Supercenter parking lot, where I hung out until after the Walmart closed. I think I pretty much just wasted time, though I don’t remember for sure. Maybe I was productive in something. I… Just don’t remember.
But I do remember is that after I left the Walmart parking lot, I headed over to the Bentonville Planet Fitness, where I parked in a very conspicuous spot right out front, which I hope would actually make me less conspicuous. 🙃
I wasted time on escape stuff, news, sports, etc until I finally crashed for the night about 2:30, I think.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 