The Irony of the Low Battery

I never let my phone battery die. Never. If I need power for songs on a morning run, taking an Uber, or taking a late-night call, the battery is always charged. I've had this phone for 3 years, and the battery has never died, no matter what country I'm in, whether I'm on a long flight, or how busy the day is.

Until this quarantine, in which my phone battery has died 5 times and it's perennially on "low battery". I also keep losing my phone in my house, which is, like, SO not something I do.

I saw a meme saying that people who let their phone die when they're stuck at home are a special breed, but it made me wonder. When I'm using my phone so much less, and when I'm near an outlet all the time, how does it keep dying?

Presumably, I have lost my routine, so I've stopped charging it. I don't need to depend on it, so I have made it something that isn't dependable.

It seems like a very good metaphor for my personal battery. I have never had less to do than I do right now, but my battery is constantly low. It's not because I'm doing too much, but because I have lost the things that charge it back up (for me, that's alone time, work, routine, and... work!). I do not have a dependable battery right now. 

So for those of you whose phone batteries or emotional batteries are running low and running out, you're not alone. We may not be able to find a way to charge up right now. We may have to take the little moments where we remember to plug in - both our phones and ourselves. We can get through it. 

My hypothesis is that for both the phone battery and my internal battery, maybe mindlessly scrolling through my phone a little less would help!