A Letter You Can Give to Your Children in Twenty Years Explaining That You Don’t Have Photos or Videos of Them as Babies Because You Couldn’t Figure Out How to Handle Your Phone’s Storage

Dear [CHILD NAME],

I’m sorry. I really am. I have a job. And I raise you. And neither of those two things is as time-consuming or difficult as creating space on my iPhone.

I have iCloud Sync, but somehow, that’s designed so that if I delete a photo or video from my phone, it deletes from the cloud. It’s less of a digital storage solution and more of a digital data prison.

I have Google Photos, but my Google Drive is out of stock. I don’t know why. And I can’t bear to figure it out. (I deleted a ton of old emails last year. It took forever to do and accomplished nothing.)

I have Dropbox. I think that’s just file storage. I don’t think I can sync my photos and videos automatically. My god, I can’t try to figure that out right now.

This is what I’m up against.

I have tried. I have. I pay every single month of my adult life for the privilege of having iCloud, Google Drive, and Dropbox storage that I can’t use to make my phone a device that can take a single photo or video of your [MONUMENTAL LIFE STAGE OR ACHIEVEMENT GONE FOREVER TO THE WHIMS OF MEMORY].

By the way, is “digital storage” the “climate change” of the future? Is it the existential problem that feels too big to handle, so it becomes a public crisis that drags on slowly and then quickly, and then it envelops you?

No? It’s still climate change? For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about that too.

I will keep trying. I will sync. I will cloud. I will keep the app open because, apparently, I have a lot of photos to back up, and the backup will pause when the app is closed. This is extortion. I love you.

With—I want to say humiliation, but I’m honestly too depressed about what a slog this basic have-a-phone-that-can-easily-use-all-the-unused-digital-storage-that-I-pay-for thing is that I’m too tired and annoyed to feel shame, so let’s just say instead…

With complete and utter resignation,
[THE TITLE YOU USE TO REFER TO YOURSELF AS A PARENT THAT YOU’RE OBVIOUSLY NOT EARNING RIGHT NOW]