You still have made a choice (TextNow Review)

About a month ago I posted a very gripping tale about cell phones and phone services and now I’m here to follow up! The program I ended up with is called TextNow which boasts some of the cheapest full service (1 G data, ample minutes and unlimited texting) I could find. They also enable you to get pretty nice phones for pretty cheap, and they don’t have contracts, so weird unstable people like me don’t have to make up their minds long term.

I’ve officially had TextNow for a month, and to be honest, I’m still figuring out a lot on the phone. I have however determined some clear pros and cons.

Pros:

Got a great phone, with a case for $100. My one pre-req. was that the phone be refurbished, but it didn’t seem like a pre-owned phone. It came in a fancy box with charger and case, and some get started manuals. I like the Samsung style, and how customizable everything is(once I figured it all out).

Customer Service in English: They seem very committed to customer service. All of the people I’ve spoken with are native English-speakers, and when you e-mail them a question, they answer when they can (which may take a day or two) and then follow up to make sure your problem is solved. . Certain things can take a while, but that’s because their customer service hours are reasonable hours to ask a human to work in customer service, so if you ask a question on a weekend it could take a day to get back to you.

Cheap!: I’m currently on the $27/month plan, which is the cheapest plan I could find for what I wanted (1g of data, 1250 roll over minutes, unlimited texting). By the time of my bill I had only used 856 gigs and 160 minutes, so I’m thinking about downgrading, especially in my busy/remote months. It’s nice to have a phone service that makes it so easy to fluctuate between prices and services. The lower plan is only $18.00 a month…but it’s set up for people who have wifi in their homes and offices and don’t really use data much. Although I don’t have wifi in my home or office, I think I can get away with the cheaper service, especially when I’m out on the road so much.

Cons:

Poor Service: I have been trying to argue this as a positive thing (I’ve already been able to use the excuse, “Sorry I didn’t take your call, boss, I have really poor service” but I’m worried that will wear out soon). Whether inside my concrete bunker of a house, or outside on the street, I rarely get more than 3 or 4 bars (I think it goes up to 6).  Part of the dysfunction could be that I’m still figuring out how to use a smart phone… but I definitely have a less reliable call experience, and searching the internet seems to be variable on how close to the window I’m standing or which direction I’m facing.

Text message fail: Unless I have a certain amount of service (2 or 3 bars maybe), text messages don’t send through the TextNow service, which is the only service that I have to send text messages. It bugs me that it doesn’t tell me when a message doesn’t send… It just casually pops up a little error message and then I notice an hour or a day later when I wonder why the person hasn’t responded, and the question or comment is irrelevant. I’m not sure how to remedy this, but I’ll keep playing with it, or get used to it, for as long as I have this service.

Missing Voicemails? As I was typing this I was informed that someone who showed a missed call on my phone, had actually left me a message, but no where does my phone say that. This is the second time that's happened, so I submitted some feedback to Textnow. Honestly, it might be a game changer. It's one thing to miss calls or drop calls, but completely miss information that people think they're leaving me...not okay for a phone service. 

Overall I’m happy with my purchase but that’s because I don’t mind having a sort of ghetto service. The phone itself seems smarter than me- and I’m okay taking my time to get to know it.
I think this would be a great plan for someone who pays for internet and doesn’t want to pay a ridiculous amount of money a month for cell service, and has plenty of sprint coverage in the places they spend the most time. 

The Move

The most valuable thing that has been reinforced in my two months of living back home is that I am a sponge. It may be apparent to readers from our cross country journey, but it didn’t sink in until the last week or so of living with the folks. I guess another way of saying it is that I am adaptive. Perhaps one of the reasons I get along so well in jobs is because I don’t take on a direct personality of my own, but reinstate the values and beliefs of my superiors and peers. It’s not that I don’t have my own values and beliefs, although admittedly they are still forming, it’s just part of my natural character to slide into the attitudes of the people I’m around. This was evident at home, where I put aside my preferences for peeing outside, reading and writing for entertainment, and vegan eating and instead lay on the couch and watch a long movie, nibbled on cheesy delicacies, and utilized modern luxuries that I have been without in my cross country travels.
The point of this realization is that now that I am finally here in my own space with my fiancé, I get to build a space that completely caters to my values, adding in and keeping out the things I observed from staying with friends across the country. Today is the day that I set routines that will hopefully propel me into life patterns, and I feel a mix between pressure and excitement. It’s like a new year in many ways- not only is the weather warming from a mercurial winter, but a new job is starting and my  26^th birthday is around the corner. This is an exciting time for my blog, too, because instead of just plopping right into my sustainably-focused mind, I can chart out each decision on a new slate. In fact, to commemorate this, I am switching blogsites. I’m going to shift to Blogger, eventually backlogging all my old tumblr blogs. I think that blogspot is a little more professional looking, with a lot more options, such as people being able to comment*, and it will allow me several tabs to organize my blogs into personal rants like these, DIY projects, and art that I’ve accomplished.
So now that the world knows what’s up, I guess there’s nothing left to do but put down the computer and begin to build my new world, my way, with some help from my fiancé, of course.
—Flash forward 2 weeks:
Designing a creative, functional space where I can be productive and happy has not been as easy as I imagined. I’m writing this from my favorite corner that this morning I dubbed my “office,” which is nothing but a creaky but comfy  papasaun and the edge of a desk slightly out of arms distance, now stacked with books, notepads, jump drives, and notebooks. Although I am happy sitting in my ‘office’ where I spent most of yesterday knitting, I can’t help but feel a bit boring. I am slowly getting into the routine that will be my life in this space, which is to say that there is no routine at all. It reminds me of college- navigating appointments and gym hours between classes and meetings. I loved that schedule, thrived in it, even…and yet I feel so displaced from it here. I love living in Albuquerque, and I’ve been trying to take advantage of every little opportunity that presents itself to me- like I also did in college. But I don’t feel ‘at home’ yet. The walls are decorated with our favorite designs, the counters are full of our beloved things, and yet, I’m unsure how to interact with the space. Perhaps I’m not sure how to redefine home now that I have the opportunity to make a space away from my parents and the people and spaces I called home for most of my life, even if I have been removed from those spaces for several years. I guess home is where the heart is and although my stuff is here, and I like it here, I’m not in Love yet, and my heart remains in those humid summer nights, the crunch of the oak leaves under the drying crab grass, and the handful of days when the windows can be open and the inside and outside world are in harmony.  Will I ever find a home like that again? Will it take another 18 years of living in one place to have the roots of my heart remain so firmly in one place? I imagine Austin will always be home, even as the city that once revealed such possibility to me, is now foreign and threatening. But can I make this place feel like home in my heart, knowing that I won’t be living here for 18 years, or probably even 1/4^th of that.
I guess through the last 6 years of moving around, I have held home my heart, absorbing how others interact with me and the spaces I live in…and now that there are no more attitudes to pick up, no more ideals to imitate…I’m left with my empty artwork, and this big old space wondering where I start making the connections just between me and the land. And how?

Catching Up

Oh, hello, Blog world… Boy do I have some news for you.
Just two weeks ago I moved to my first house (sort of), in a new city, to begin a new job (well, string of jobs). I’ll let that series of events speak for itself as my excuse for my blogging hiatus, but I’m back now with ample material on sustainable decision-making. Before I dive into all that, I believe I have some back-blogging to do. (rather than post part 2 of piles and piles in a separate blog, I’m attaching it to the first one, if anyone is interested in reading about how much money I made selling dolls in the street. )
2/20
Growing Up…
Perhaps the hardest thing about getting older is not being “a kid” anymore. I mean, not to my parents. My mom says that I will always be her kiddo, which is true…but having my dad accompany me for our move to Albuquerque was a sort of reality check that I’m not their little girl anymore. At age 26 (almost), I guess it was about time.
I don’t think it was just because I was paying for the gas, and the food along the way— I appreciate being able to demonstrate my financial fortitude. I think it was playing host to my Dad in my new house that sent the shockwave. After two months of living back at home, after 3 years of traveling around the country, and 4 months before that of living back at home…all after announcing to my college counselor that I would do “anything but live with my parents after college,” I am finally in a solid structure to call my own  that allows me to host guests, such as my dad.  
So far this new home-owning, house renting thing has been a completely surreal experience. Last week Amil and I went to a bar downtown for a poetry reading, and it was really strange to realize that we were here, in “our town” without hosts, or a rental car, or a train to take to a house we were staying in for a while… nope, we just walked to our car and drove home (stopping at some dumpsters on the way, no luck though). Of course there are social perks of being a grown-up. We had some people over for a house warming party and stayed up all the way past midnight! We can go grocery shopping whenever we want and get whatever we want to fill our fridge and pantry…and you better believe those things are filled. But this grown-up thing has some hassles, too. Registering as a Sole Proprietor? Blah. Signing up (again) for health insurance, knowing that I have to go through the process again in a few weeks when I get my first proof of income? Paying rent. Some of these annoyances have had me considering if this swift move to “adulthood,” and out of residential jobs was really a good idea. A quick punch of the numbers shows that I’m not making as much money as I would be at my old job. But… I have a 27 acre backyard (I guess I had the whole forest there), and a solid group of friends (that I’m tighter with than the 30 people in my community previously), anddd we can cook and eat whatever we want, and damn, it’s been good.
So this is all still feeling surreal. I imagine that by the time I’ve had enough and dive back into grad school, it will finally start feeling normal, only to be tipped on it’s head again. But heck, I just read about a woman who’s 117 years old…and that’s a long ass time to be a grown-up. I’m gonna take my time settling in to anything for now. And just enjoy the ride. And the black bean cupcakes. And coconut ice cream.