Likely Normal

There’s a special kind of modern panic that sets in when you realize you’ve accidentally locked yourself out of your entire digital life. And I owe this particular existential crisis to my shiny new phone—or more accurately, to the 10-minute gap between “This setup is taking forever” and “I have to leave for chess club right now or a bunch of elementary students will start sacrificing pawns out of boredom.”

Here’s how it went down: I’d bravely ventured into the cellular store to upgrade my phone, naively assuming the process would be as smooth as a Grandmaster’s opening move. But as the minutes ticked by with the salesperson cheerfully assuring me “Just a few more minutes!” (a lie as old as time), I realized I had a hard stop: chess club waits for no one, especially not knights who still try to move like checkers pieces.

So I did what any responsible adult would do—I bolted as soon as the transfer finished without verifying the apps all worked. Big mistake. Huge.

After chess club, I discovered the horrific truth: my old phone had been wiped clean, my authenticator apps had not migrated properly, and I was now a digital ghost. No email. No banking. No way to prove I wasn’t a bot attempting to hack… myself.

The irony wasn’t lost on me. Here I was, a cybersecurity guy who preaches “always think three moves ahead,” completely blindsided by the fact that technology has zero respect for the concept of a backup plan. My kingdom for a working 2FA code!

For the next 24 hours, I lived like a spy whose cover had been blown—performing verbal CAPTCHAs to prove I was human, resetting MFA on all my services, and ultimately learning a valuable lesson: never rush a phone transfer when your entire existence is held together by digital authentication.