My phone is a little bit broken. As in, I’m still receiving seven emails per minute from LinkedIn but I’m missing text messages.

A friend of mine suggested that this might be due to a storage problem and advised me to delete some of the extra crap on my phone.

Here’s the problem. A few weeks ago, I took a trip to Berlin. This obviously included two fairly long flights, both on which my ears needed to be occupied. Since I knew I wouldn’t have the luxury of Pandora in the ~sky~, I went to my music app and dusted off the old jams.

All of the songs I ever bought on iTunes are in there, which is an eclectic collection from 2007 to 2009, including the Camp Rock soundtrack and the Alvin & the Chipmunks version of “Bad Day”.

These songs are all listed in the app, but they’re not actually there. They’re in the “cloud”.

Spooky.

Next to each song is a little cloud containing a down arrow that invites you to bring the song down from it.

So, at the airport, I scrolled through my playlists, generously clicking on each cloud that sat beside a song I wanted to hear. Glee mashup of “It’s My Life” and “Confessions, Part II”? Definitely a yes! And then I would pop the cloud and let the song rain down.

After countless of these deliberations, I had a hefty list of tunes ready for the plane.

Little did I know that upon my return, I wouldn’t be able to send these oldies back up to the cloud where they belong! The option for evaporation was absent. No ocean icon with squiggly up arrows could be found beside the songs. Just a blank space, mocking me for setting the music free.

All of this is to say that I don’t have the knowledge to free up space on my phone, and so it remains broken.

Think of all the messages I could be missing! Job offers could be getting lost in science space.

Have I applied for any jobs? Not exactly (sorry, Dad), but that doesn’t mean that no one is recruiting me via text message!

As you now know, I do have a LinkedIn profile. It is not impossible that someone who already has my phone number was intrigued by my skill endorsements (PowerPoint and Microsoft Office) and texted me an invitation to jumpstart my career.

I have mixed feelings about LinkedIn. While I appreciate the opportunity to network in my pajamas, morally, it seems questionable.

Essentially, when you request to connect with someone, you’re saying, “Hey, let’s use each other without having to talk to each other.”

Instead of having to reach out to Leon from kindergarten and ask him how his mom’s doing over lunch before slyly asking if he knows anyone in the celebrity wedding industry, all I have to do is click a button and I can check for myself.

Sure, I can pass the salt! Anything for you, Leon! You want me to shake it for you? Tell me when to stop. Shit, too much? Let me wipe it off and hey, speaking of salt, do you happen to know anyone who could get me a job on Cupcake Wars?

By the way—and I know you were thinking it too—Leon and I could have ended up dating! How many relationships do you think you missed out on because of LinkedIn?

Think about that tonight when you go to sleep.

And just so we’re keeping track of all my blog posts, the list of potential reasons for why I’m single thus far includes LinkedIn and clouds. And arguably the iCloud. Let’s definitely keep adding to this list!

But only I’m allowed to.

If anyone knows how to make the songs on my phone evaporate, please contact me via email or person-to-person contact (it’s when two people stand or sit somewhere together and talk to each other out loud; can be really fun if it’s with the right person but try it at your own risk).