The Journey of a Lifetime

Found objects, Vol. 9: The card that came inside my new iPhone case.

May 28, 2025

The adventure begins. Photo ©2025, Ted Anthony.

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"I'm going to take a little trip 
down Paradise's endless shores.
They say that travel broadens the mind
'til you can't get your head out of doors."

—Elvis Costello

I WANTED YOU – yes, you specifically — to be among the first to know that I am setting out on a journey today. I don’t know where it will take me. But I know for sure that it will change me.

Here’s how it started. I ordered a new iPhone case for $19.79 from Amazon. It arrived yesterday and was exactly what I was hoping for, which was a new iPhone case. But as I opened it — I believe the proper term these days is “unboxing” — a little orange card tumbled out. Upon it was etched a small astronaut in a rocketship and an exhortation: “Let’s Start a Wonderful Journey!”

And with that, I was off.

As I depart, I find myself contemplating such journeys. The philosophy is pretty mainstream in marketing circles. A company called Illumin has this to say about them:

A consumer journey is the path of interactions or steps a consumer has with a product, service, or brand on the way to making a purchase. The route includes understanding how they found the website or platform, their shopping habits, and their behavior patterns along the conversion process.
Consumer journey mapping requires marketers to paint a picture of how a user or consumer may behave or react in the real world using traffic data, analytics, research, testing, and evaluation. The buyer’s journey matters because they are the final decision-makers in purchasing decisions.

But, as was so famously said so often in “Airplane,” that’s not important right now. I have questions:

Where will this iPhone case propel me to in my life? What will I learn? Who will I meet? Where might my trip end? Will there be more purchases en route? Who might I become when it’s all over?

I’m traveling a lot these days, and I can only hope that my other journeys — my antiperspirant journey, my nacho cheese journey, my garden rake journey, those kinds of shorter trips — don’t get in the way. I’m particularly concerned with potential scheduling problems related to my Fruit Adventure — that one’s already in progress after years of meticulous planning.

Enough on that. I don’t want any of us to get distracted from my iPhone case journey. I will keep you apprised of interesting stops and interludes along the way. Perhaps there will be postcards. Or souvenirs.

So many travels. So much to see. And wherever I go, my new iPhone case will be there by my side, a stalwart and peaceable traveling companion, never complaining, always game for what discoveries and epiphanies might be just down the road.