Out with the Old? Not Yet. . .

Our cell phones needed upgrades.

Johnny's phone had it the worst. His phone would continuously restart itself until it drained the battery every time the phone was taken off the charger, the top of his phone's screen was frozen, and the power button stopped working. His cell phone basically became a land line which was permanently plugged in under threat of losing everything if the phone died, because there would have been no way to turn it back on. Glorious.

My phone was slow and old. Sometimes it would make calls, and sometimes it wouldn't. Really annoying when I really needed to call someone, but the phone wouldn't dial.

The months of craziness ended when we upgraded our phones from T-Mobile.

We were excited when those shiny, new phones came in the mail!

Soon Johnny was rocking his new smartphone, 

but I haven't activated mine yet.

I love my new phone. I play with it everyday. I just haven't activated it to the T-Mobile network yet. For the last week, I've carried it around the house like a mini tablet. But I'm still making calls on my dinosaur age, slow-as-a-snail phone. So here I am, a week later, writing about my procrastination to activate cell service to my fancy new phone, all because I'm worried.

I'm worried because I plan to change my cell phone number when I activate the phone.

I was 21 and finishing up my third year of college, when I got my first cell phone. At the time, I was living in Idaho where I attended Brigham Young University-Idaho. So, naturally my cell phone was given an Idaho area code and phone number. Nine years later, I still have an Idaho phone number. The crazy part is that I've lived in Texas for the last 7.5 years! I know it's time to switch to a local Texas number, but somehow the transition is easy to procrastinate. Each day I find an excuse to conveniently forget to T-Mobile and obtain my local cell number, even though I'm the one that wants to make the switch. I guess I'm shooting myself in the foot while telling myself to keep running forward.

I'm worried that losing my cell phone number places me out of touch with close friends from the past. What if they lose the text message that provides my new number? What if I never hear from those previously important people? Even if we don't talk more than once every year or so, something inside me wants to maintain those bonds. (See? Even counselors need to do some self-exploring sometimes.)

Deep down I know that things will work out fine. It's just a number, and the people I'll potentially lose contact with will have happy lives regardless of my cell phone number. But so far, my fear of losing is greater than my hope of establishing new friendships with new numbers.

Maybe tomorrow will be the day. . .