Recently, my phone stopped working.
More specifically, it stopped charging, which is one of those wonderfully modern problems that can go from minor annoyance to genuine crisis remarkably quickly. A phone isn’t really a phone anymore. It’s your camera, your map, your email, your social life, your news source, your notebook, your music player and, increasingly, the little slab of glass through which you conduct a disturbingly large percentage of your existence.
So when mine stopped charging, I wanted to get the problem fixed immediately.
The trouble is that I’m generally flat broke.
Fortunately, the phone picked a relatively good time to die. I was in that brief sweet spot of the month when I actually had a little extra money. Not a lot of extra money, mind you. I’m not suddenly rolling around Richmond tossing twenties into the air. But enough that replacing a phone was something I could contemplate without immediately descending into financial panic.
So I did it.
And I’m glad I did, because I’ve long believed there are certain things in life where being cheap can become a false economy. If you’re going to use something constantly—every day, often for hours at a time—then it can make sense to spend a little more to get something decent.
Phones are one of those things.
Glasses are another.
Which is amusing because I also recently bought new glasses.
Apparently this is the season of Shelt replacing essential equipment.
There is something mildly ridiculous about calling a phone and a pair of glasses “equipment,” but that’s really what they are. I put my glasses on almost immediately after waking up. I pick up my phone not long afterward. These aren’t luxury objects that sit on a shelf waiting for special occasions. They’re part of the basic infrastructure of my life.
If I’m going to stare through a pair of lenses all day, I want good lenses.
If I’m going to carry a tiny computer around with me practically every waking hour, I want one that works.
There are plenty of things where I’ll happily take the cheapest option available. But there are a handful of objects that mediate your relationship with the world so continuously that paying a little extra seems justified. A mattress probably belongs on that list. Shoes probably do, too. Anything between you and the ground, as the old rule goes.
And apparently anything between you and the Internet.
But buying the new phone and the new glasses at roughly the same time has left me with the strange feeling that I’m crossing some kind of invisible boundary in my life.
A new era.
That sounds much more dramatic than buying consumer electronics deserves, but the feeling isn’t really about the phone.
It’s about 2027.
Because, barring some unexpected change in circumstances, I expect 2027 to fucking suck for me financially.
A significant part of that anxiety comes from Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.” The law makes substantial changes to programs that matter disproportionately to people with less money. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that, overall, households toward the bottom of the income distribution will have fewer resources available to them as a result of the law, even as households farther up the income distribution generally gain resources.
I have no desire to turn this particular post into a thousand-word excavation of federal budget policy. That’s another post.
My point here is much more personal.
I can see the storm clouds.
Maybe I’m wrong about exactly how bad things will become for me. I certainly hope I am. There are variables I can’t predict, political decisions that haven’t been made yet and personal circumstances that could change. Life has a way of making fools out of anyone who tries to draw a perfectly straight line from the present into the future.
But I know enough to believe that next year could be considerably more difficult than this one.
And there is virtually nothing I can personally do about that at the moment.
That’s the maddening part.
There are macro forces operating far above my pay grade. Congress passes legislation. Presidents sign it. Agencies implement it. States react to it. Economists model it. Politicians go on television and explain why it is either the greatest piece of legislation in human history or the imminent destruction of Western civilization.
Meanwhile, you’re standing in your kitchen looking at your bank account and wondering whether you can afford a phone.
That’s where politics eventually becomes real.
For most people, politics isn’t ultimately experienced as congressional procedure or charts showing ten-year budget projections. It’s experienced when the rent is due. It’s experienced at the grocery store. It’s experienced when you need a prescription, when your car makes an ominous noise, when your glasses break or when your phone suddenly refuses to charge.
The macro eventually arrives at the micro.
But the reverse is also true: the micro is where you still have some control.
I cannot personally rewrite federal legislation.
I can replace my broken phone.
I can buy a decent pair of glasses.
I can write.
I can take my walks. I can listen to music. I can talk to people I care about. I can appreciate a good meal or a beautiful afternoon or the ridiculous little miracle of carrying a computer in my pocket that would have seemed like science fiction when I was a kid.
And maybe that’s what I’m feeling right now.
We’re entering the last few months of 2026, and I have this peculiar sense that I’m living through the closing pages of one chapter before the next chapter becomes considerably more complicated.
So I’m going to enjoy these months.
Not because I believe catastrophe is inevitable. It isn’t. Not because January 1 is going to arrive and suddenly everything will become terrible. Life doesn’t obey calendar boundaries that neatly.
But because there is something to be said for recognizing the good parts of your life while you’re actually living them.
We spend an extraordinary amount of time anticipating things. Waiting for the next bill. The next election. The next crisis. The next technological breakthrough. The next horrible thing in the news. The next wonderful thing in the news. We’re constantly living three months or three years in the future.
Sometimes you have to drag yourself back into the present.
Right now, it’s October 2026.
I’m okay.
I’ve got new glasses.
I’ve got a new phone.
The phone actually charges.
And whatever 2027 has waiting for me will arrive soon enough.
For the moment, I’m going to enjoy the damn phone.
