Begin Again.

A gravely serious and painful thing happened to me on Thursday. I remember it like it was yesterday. I had just come home from an overproductive day at work, and decided I wanted to move a song I had bought on my phone to the cozy music library on my computer. I fetched my handy-dandy USB link and hooked up the two technologies. A funny screen popped up - did I want to call this new device Anna's iPhone, or did I want it to be a new being? That's a silly question. Of course this is Anna's iPhone. Anna loves her iPhone. Anna takes care of her iPhone. Anna thinks it's fun to refer to herself in third person every now and again.

I made my selection, and suddenly a tiny, tiny screen with the words Reformatting iPhone popped up on my screen. Wait, I didn't want to reformat my new phone. What's going on? I watched in horror as the screen changed to Reformatting Photo Library. Where was the Cancel button? I have to make this stop. I don't want to get rid of my new photos. Where the hell was the Cancel button? I pressed the failsafe Ctrl+Alt+Delete, and nothing. I couldn't shut the bugger down. The little bar kept filling up with green data, torturing me. A constant reminder that I could do absolutely nothing to stop the inevitable destruction of my brand new phone. 

Then the "update" finished. My phone had reverted back to the last time I stored my life on a laptop. April 3, 2015. The Friday after a full week at my new job in a new place in my new life. Before I had a chance to establish myself. I hadn't even been anywhere noteworthy yet. 

I lost all of my photos from the time I moved from Dallas to now. My contacts were preserved, as was my music, just the photos were altered. I suppose I hadn't taken very many, but all of them meant something. The time H and I went to the Plaza shopping district and I saw this amazing library on a street corner that looked like it was floating in midair. The time I went to the Alamo Drafthouse in downtown Kansas City and was lost in awe of angular sky-high architecture of the old time buildings. The time I walked out of my building at work and saw nothing but my red car in the parking lot against the absolutely vibrant backdrop of trees along the walking trail behind my workplace. Weekly photos of the front of the house as the established plant life budded, grew leaves, and bloomed in what seemed like timely wave after wave. 

I was heartbroken. And it took a while before I realized why this was hitting me so incredibly hard. It felt remarkably like I was starting over again, like I was a new person in a new place that I knew absolutely nothing about. There was nothing to show for my efforts at settling into our new abode, and that absolutely hurt. 

After a little wallowing (alright, quite a bit of wallowing) I decided I didn't need any of the photos on my reverted phone (they were already on the computer, anyways), so I deleted all of them. If you have ever tried to delete a multitude of photos on your phone, you may know how time consuming that can be. I had approximately 800 photos that needed to be individually selected and deleted as a whole. And you know what? It was freaking cathartic. Don't get me wrong, I love living in Texas, and I love all of the memories I have there, but you can't just move to a new place and keep dwelling on the old one. I've tried that. It's called Arizona. 

In order to make a clean and healthy break into a new place, you have to loose some stones. I think there's an idiom in there, but I'm terrible with sayings. What I mean is, it's a good thing I brought this big strong pickax with me to Kansas City.

And, in an attempt to post more photos for posterity, here is a picture of some clothes I particularly liked from the clearance section at Macy's. I ended up keeping the pants (their softness is inconceivable).