On Thursday, I lost my phone.

It wasn’t just in the back of my car (which I no longer have) or left it somewhere at work. I lost it on public transport. In Sydney. Unlocked.

Yes. It sounds pretty bad.

Thankfully, my phone/electronic record of all the quirks of my wretched personality was returned to me.

I wasn’t even 24 hours without it.

I’d like to tell you that in the 20-hour-period I was without my phone I was calm, relaxed and finally free from the technological oppressor enslaving me with its drip feed of dopamine hits to sustain my addiction.

Buuuut I still checked Facebook and Instagram that night… on my laptop.

It would be powerful to explain how my muted senses came back to me with startling vivacity – that I could suddenly could know where I’m going after one glance of a map and that my sluggish memory whirred back into life again. But they didn’t.

I took a taxi to the place I was to meet the woman who had my phone so I wouldn’t be late trying to work out where I was going, and I had to refer to the Post-It note I’d jotted the address on in order to instruct the cabbie.

It would delightful to say that it woke me up to the world. That I suddenly saw natural beauty, that I marvelled at the way the light hits the leaves and illuminates their edges, as if they were painted by an optimistic impressionist who’d just made love in a meadow of daffodils.

But my eyes are still fucked from a career of staring at computer screens.

And of course it would be a nice narrative to describe how being without my phone on my journey home led me to really seeing people and, eventually, meeting my soul mate.

Instead, I saw a guy who kiiind of looked like a kid I used to catch the bus with who had grown himself a moustache. He didn’t seem to recognise me.

There was nothing whimsical about losing my means of communicating with and staying connected to the people I love.

Sorry.

But it did teach me the importance of having a passcode.

I’ve always hated passcodes. They were wanky and cumbersome and extremely annoying.

But now I’m a convert.

Because the thought of some stranger going through your phone/the window to your soul is quite uncomfortable.

Just going through my camera roll alone was disconcerting enough.

Here is a small glimpse at the kind of humiliating revelations that could have been made public about me had my telephone ended in the wrong hands. This, of course, is a non-exhaustive list. There are many, many skeletons in my digital closet. Please, enjoy my inventory of embarrassment:

• Two photos of my big toe bundled up in toilet paper, bound with an overstretched hair tie because I didn’t have access to a Band-Aid at the time of injury
• A screen grab of a birthday snap for a mate who shares a nickname with one of the major search engines on the internet. I’d copied their funky logo idea and used my glasses to make up the two Os in the name and was pulling a suitably moronic expression
• Four pictures of an acai bowl, close up – as if I’m some kind of buddying *takes a deep breath*…wellness influencer
• No less than 16 photos I’d taken of a stubby and a bucket of hummus to make one of my “I’m so effortlessly funny” Instagram posts
• Eight photos of a single egg and lettuce sandwich
• Six photos of the egg salad being made – it’s not even egg salad, it’s just boiled egg mixed with some store-bought mayonnaise
• Graphic video evidence of some severe chaffing I’d sustained from wearing a pair of sentimental (i.e. extremely worn-out and entirely impractical) shorts while jogging
• Aaaand of course, my photographic study of the toenail that was badly bruised at a Christmas party and its revolting progression.

The worst part about this is that I didn’t even have and nudey pictures or sex tapes on there, so they couldn’t have even been leaked, giving me an opportunity to convert my youthful sexual exploits into forging a multi-million dollar empire for my sisters.

What a bloody waste.