Did you wake up early to reserve your new iPhone last Friday? I did … foolishly early.

I haven’t 100% committed to buying it yet nor have I truly really figured out if I need it. Sure my current phone (iPhone 3G) is well past its prime, but do I really want to enter into an exorbitant contract for 3 years lest pay, heaven forbid, full price for my new phone!?! 

But a contract I likely will sign because I am both too cheap and too broke to pay full price. But why am I reluctant to sign a contract (let’s leave the stupidly long term of the contract out of it – and thank your lucky stars that you aren’t in Canada since we have among the most ludicrous mobile phone markets in the world)? I think the reason I don’t want to sign a contract is because I will feel boxed in.

Why? 

I don’t like talking to utility providers any more than I have to and, as long as things work and my fees are roughly predictable I likely won’t change providers for at least as long as the term of my contract anyway. But the contract still feels like a yolk that holds me in place, a yolk that, were it entirely of my own doing, wouldn’t feel so restrictive.

Family works that way, and attending parties you don’t want to attend because they are thrown by people who would look down upon you or be hurt by you if you didn’t. Life is full of these little fences that pen us in place, invisible and mutable but nonetheless profound and ever present.

Now if I could only figure out how to get my phone cheap, not be on contract, but carry on with the same plan and not have to speak to a CSR person at my mobile provider I’d be golden. 

Alas, dreams of another day.