Today, we backed up my iPhone 6s and traded it in for the latest iPhone XS. In the last few months, I’d noticed that my phone’s battery life was waning severely and quite early in the day to the point where while at the office, I’d just leave it plugged in pretty much all the time unless I had my Bose bluetooth earbuds plugged in. The phone was constantly desperate to be charged. The pull to get email and other updates had slowed down, and it was really bothering me. I’d had this phone for about three years at this point, and unfortunately, I recognized that I was being pulled into the Apple fanboy base in the same way that other Apple product users were; I wanted a faster phone. And these phones were designed to not last forever and be as performant. We are all being brainwashed to want something better, faster, newer, more efficient. And so I caved in and got the stupid XS today.

I have no sentimentality when it comes to technology. My iPhone 6s will be taken apart and recycled for parts for future phones. Who cares. Bye bye. It once served its purpose and now will serve a new purpose in getting taken apart and reused. I guess I don’t have much sentimentality when it comes to most physical things I own. Chris has talked about selling my engagement ring once diamonds actually do increase in value in the mid 2020s (thanks to the brainwashed mainland Chinese people who actually are buying diamonds so fast that there will truly be a diamond scarcity; who would’ve thunk it?!). And I’m genuinely okay with it if it means that a profit could be made, and something more special, more attractive, and actual rare could take its place. In retrospect, I am saddened by the fact that I was brainwashed into the DeBeers’s marketing scam that “a diamond is forever,” and the trite belief that that is what a wedding engagement ring should be. Now, I actually occasionally oogle over the beautiful and rare bi-colored sapphires I see in my Instagram feed — gemstones that truly are rare in nature that are also worth quite more than a diamond.

Human beings are so predictable. We just want all the same crap other people want. So, it’s refreshing when people rebel from the status quo and want something different. But I still can’t live without my smartphone, though.