I Didn't Fix My Phone For 19 Days

Dear friend,

I cracked my phone screen in a Target parking lot on September 2.

It slid off the roof of my car while I was loading a case of water into the back seat. The crack ran from the bottom left corner straight up through the keyboard. The kiosk at the mall quoted me $129 to fix it, and I said no and drove home.

So today’s letter says one thing. You are allowed to pay for the tool that brings your money in.

I sell printable wedding signs on Etsy. The downloads are $12 to $18, and the custom ones run $60 to $90. Every custom order starts as a DM. I read it, I type a quote, and I send a proof from Canva, all on that phone, with one thumb, on my lunch break from my day job.

For 19 days I typed through the crack. The Q, the A and the Z only worked if I pressed them twice. I kept the $129 sitting in my checking account the whole time and felt very careful about it.

Here is the math I did on Monday night, on the new screen.

In those 19 days two brides messaged me about custom signs. One wanted a welcome sign for $85. I answered her 11 hours late, because I kept putting off typing on broken glass, and by then she had booked someone else. The second wanted a seating chart for $60. My quote went out as $6, since the 0 key sits right on the crack. I sent a correction, and she never wrote back.

$85 plus $60 is $145. The repair was $129. Not fixing the phone cost me $16 more than fixing it, and those are only the two orders I know about.

I had been filing the $129 under spending on myself. That was the wrong list. It belongs with the 20 cents Etsy takes for every listing and the $15 a month for Canva, the money that goes out so money can come in.

So here is why I held on to $129 for 19 days. My mom drove a Corolla for two years with the check engine light on. Nothing got fixed in our house until it fully stopped working, and paying early felt like showing off.

A cracked screen still turns on. By her rule it was not broken yet, and spending on it was spending on me. That rule runs in my head more than I like to admit. It sounds like “I can’t spend money on myself right now.”

But the phone was never for me. It was for the brides, the proofs, and the $12 downloads that covered my gas last month. I caught the same sentence on a $22 ring light bulb back in August.

These are the three versions of it I hear most, and what I say now instead.

There is no homework in this letter. I am not going to ask you to count your subscriptions or add up your listing fees.

Today you get to pay for the tool that brings the money in, and to feel fine about it. That might be a phone with a crack across the keyboard. It might be a ring light with one dead bulb, or a laptop charger held together with tape since March. If your money comes through it, it counts as part of the business.

I paid the $129 on Monday, September 21. It took 40 minutes. I sat in the food court with a $4 pretzel and waited for them to call my name.

That night I answered three DMs in six minutes. One was a bride in Ohio asking about a $70 table sign. I had the quote sent before she finished typing her next message, and she paid on Tuesday morning.

I don’t think the phone did that on its own. I stopped making the brides wait behind a rule my mom had about a Corolla. The money had been trying to reach me for 19 days, and Monday was the first day the way was clear.

Keep the door open,

P.S. The kiosk guy asked if I wanted a $30 screen protector. I said no, out of habit. I have held the new phone with two hands for two days now, and I still can’t tell if that was the same old line again.