And, so it goes in my rollercoaster life. There are so many ways I plan to change my life and then, wham, something else knocks those plans out of whack. The latest thing: my roommate got her Honda repossessed yesterday.

I’ve been planning on getting a new iPhone for at least a month. Mine is a 7. I’m not returning to Android. I hated my Samsung Galaxy, and it got hacked. I would have noticed the suspicious looking app had the Samsung allowed me to delete factory installed apps. It’s bullshit. The fake app was hidden among the 30-50 apps I had.

By the time I’d discovered it’s presence, the hacker, who was known to me, had harvested text messages, contact numbers, and other info.

The hacker was a former TA (graduate student teaching assistant)/archeologist, and I had no way to prove it was him. However the hacking fit right in with his sneaky, sometimes creepy behavior. For instance, he used to spoof call me with random numbers, some of which were real people numbers that coincidentally he picked out of his butt. He would sometimes spoof my contacts/ friends with the same numbers he spoofed me with.

Then there were the fake Facebook pages, and fake dating site profiles. The whole experience left me hating Android.

My phone carrier offers good deals on even the newest iPhones. For example, I can get an iPhone 17 with largest memory for $30 a month added to my bill. When I return to the lower data plan, which will be $32 a month, it’s very doable. My plan got bumped up to the next greatest data plan because I went over my data amount when we had our Wifi yanked for non-payment—twice.

Well, guess what, it got yanked again. The roommate signed us up for EarthLink while I was in the middle of comparison shopping. “I’ll take care of it,” she said.

So, the new phone is on hold (I guess that could be a pun) because I can do very little online at home. This means my Rover (dog walking/cat sitting) work is on hold. Filling out apps to do volunteer work at pet rescues is also on hold.

I can do things online at work—it’s what I’m doing right now—but, I don’t want to be at work much longer than I have to be.

I will just have to go to the library and use their computers. There are so many things I want to research for essays I want to write and submit to various publications, such as HuffPost, Mother Jones, and others.

I’m just exhausted by all the forward motion and then the event(s) that erase the progress I’ve made.

Yes, I know it’s just life. Then again, there are so many people who just are ALWAYS lucky. I’m probably luckier than most—and I’m so grateful for that—but the backsliding gets so old.

It seems like my life really DOES run more smoothly when I’m in school. School gives me an anchor, a focus, ideas on what to do next, and a plan. Money is a hurdle there, too. Go figure.

I need a significant chunk of money to get unstuck from this situation I visualize getting that pile and it’s large enough to split evenly among people in my social circle, and be able to help out the homeless—both people and animals.

Being poor just sucks giant silverback gorilla balls.