By Gretchen Leigh

My youngest daughter’s cell phone quit turning on. She charged it all night, but in the morning the screen was blank; no backlight or anything. When I plugged it in a dot of light indicating it was receiving power came on.

I knew she wanted a new phone with more memory and power, so I couldn’t help but wonder if this problem was by her own design. She’d been complaining for awhile she was constantly running out of memory and couldn’t receive text messages unless she unloaded some data and cleared the cache (a collection of items of the same type stored in a hidden or inaccessible place).

Part of me really wanted to figure out how to fix it; the other part of me was relieved that I finally had a reason to upgrade her phone. Although I like things to be used up, I was happy I wouldn’t have to listen to her complain any longer.

I did my duty and called the cell phone company to see if it was a simple, fixable issue. They walked me through a few possible solutions. When they told me I should charge the phone via the computer and call them back in two hours if it didn’t work, I was done. I knew and they knew, it wasn’t going to turn on in two hours no matter where I plugged it in. I bought my daughter a new phone.

I believe old phone’s internal storage was probably overloaded with data, and then had no capacity left to power up. She’s a teenager; there are selfies to be taken and cat videos to download, after all.

I feel that phone. I often wake up overloaded with data and don’t have the capacity to power myself up either.

Data overload happens to most wives and mothers. Many of us have a ticker tape of tasks constantly running through our heads. It’s a wonder we sleep at all. I basically have six people I’m responsible for: myself, my husband, my two biological daughters, my “adopted” daughter, and my partially disabled, widowed mother.

I urge the adults (my husband and mother) to take care of themselves as well as they can until I can get to them. However, they are always on the periphery of my consciousness. The three young ones take up most of my internal storage.

No matter how many times I attempt to clean out my brain’s cache to make space for things other than college applications, college scholarships, and cheerleading to keep them focused on their futures, I can’t clear it enough to accomplish many personal goals.

I make myself sit down for a bit of writing every day on my blog and this column. I have a calendar in front of my computer with daily writing tasks for other major writing projects, but I’m lucky find time once a week to work on any key endeavor that will make me a rich and famous author. I’m often waylaid by the problems of my charges. Non-working cell phones, for instance.

I’m not terribly concerned because I know (hope?) the kids will eventually manage themselves and I’ll be left to my own devices one day. However, given my above failure at managing my own goals, it seems hypocritical to lecture my twenty-one year old on working a little bit each day towards her goals. It’s a “do as I say not as I do” situation, with Mondays often being my only productive day of each week because it’s laundry day.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just power off and upgrade ourselves to a more efficient model with higher internal storage?

Gretchen Leigh is a stay-at-home mom who lives in Covington. You can read more of her writing and her daily blog on her website livingwithgleigh.com, on Facebook at “Living with Gleigh.”or follow her on Twitter @livewithgleigh. Her column is available every week at maplevalleyreporter.com under the Lifestyles section.