my new love
Editorial By Susan O'Connor, Illustration by Brittney Guest

Ahhh new love…isn’t it grand? Now it is in the palm of my hand, never far from my sight, my new iPhone.

Months passed as I waited patiently for my AT&T contract renewal date. All the while I battled iPhone-envy, a condition that is prevalent, but it has been without a name until now. Friends with iPhones swept their fingers across slick screens, pulling the world into view, not to mention a plethora of great music. If they were lost, a couple of swipes brought GPS. What’s playing at the nearest movie theater? It’s there for the taking. What’s the forecast, how’s the market doing— just a touch away.

What makes this so funny is that I am not typically a gadget person. I still use a television that is so old that to plug up a DVD player requires a special receiver box attached to the TV so that there is a place to plug in the necessary cords. It all still works, so why buy anything new? My computers (Mac, of course) are really only used for writing, e-mail and Photoshop. I don’t spend much time at all on the Internet.

When I showed my new little jewel to my 20-year-old daughter, Jessica, she displayed the classic iPhone-envy symptoms. “Oh, man… I can’t believe you have one! “What about your precious daughter? I need one, too!” She has a Blackberry, what more does she want?

Basically, she wants the coolness that only an iPhone can bring.

As I showed her my favorite apps, she went straight to my Achilles heel: my lack of tech savvy. “Who showed you how to do all that! I know you didn’t figure it out on your own…”

But, in this case, I could tell her that, yes, I did figure it out on my own with only minor suggestions from Audrey, our publisher. Using this phone is so simple that even I took to it like a duck to water. I was navigating the beautiful, turquoise-blue sea of technology immediately.

Only one thing mars the perfection of having this technology. It is the issue of constant contact with the world. Texts and emails seem to arrive constantly, incessantly, impatiently, waiting to be answered. Work flows into leisure in a way that it never has before. How did we stay in touch 10 or 15 years ago? How did business ever get done? We’ve become so accustomed to today’s technology that the past seems positively archaic, but so much simpler. Maybe people have always looked at the past nostalgically.

I’ll take today, though, preferably at my little cabin nestled in a rocky hillside overlooking Cooper Creek. But I’ll have my iPhone and laptop with me.