This blog post comes to you from a Midas brake shop in Fontana, CA, where I’m waiting for someone to take a look at the squealing brakes on Bridget, my adorable family car (she’s a Honda Fit, so really her whole name is Bridget Fonda the Honda — all of our cars have had names, and all the Hondas have been named after members of the Fonda family).
I’m sitting in a fairly comfy chair, I’ve plugged in my laptop, and there’s actually a decent wireless connection. I’ve worked in worse places, so I’m pretty happy at the moment.
Normally I’d be reading a book at a time like this, but the internet connection at my house isn’t working, so I’m grabbing all the online time I can.
See, we had a super-apocalyptic version of one of our normal fall Santa Ana windstorms on Wednesday night, and at 4:30am the power went out for thousands of people in our area. After a 15-hour outage, power blinked back on at about 7:30pm on Thursday. Hallelujah! We could cook! Bathe in hot water! Watch television!
I secretly was hoping we’d have to have a completely candlelit evening, though. I love candles.
Except that the router wasn’t picking up an internet connection. So after trying the various reset-restart-reboot operations, and spending 45 minutes on the phone with Verizon tech support, I learned that we’d need a new router. Which Verizon was happy to ship to us at no charge.
So I’m without internet until Monday.
(I did try to arrange to pick up a new router from a local Verizon store, but that turned into a scavenger hunt game of chase-down-the-right-phone-number and then take-a-number-and-wait-in-line-in-the-store-where-they’re showing-Secretariat-on-TV (I haven’t seen the movie yet! Spoiler alert: HE WON THE TRIPLE CROWN!! Then I got to see what I think was the first 10 minutes of the Karate Kid remake, featuring Jackie Chan eating noodles with chopsticks) and then leave-before-my-number-got-called-because-I-can’t-miss-my-brake-appointment…)
This is an interesting situation.
I had to reschedule a client call, and of course all my client work is being delayed, because working on live websites requires being connected to the internet.
There is non-online work I can be doing, of course — planning, writing, filing, organizing, etc. But the actual work, the part where I run backups and install plugins and publish blog posts and tweak sales pages? Can’t be done without an internet connection.
So it is fascinating to notice that part of my reaction is logical and sensible because the majority of what I do requires being online. And that another part is the jittery, twitchy, impending delirium tremens of internet withdrawal.
Of course I never considered myself addicted until I couldn’t get my fix.
And then it was a surprisingly short time until I caught myself thinking ridiculous nonsensical things like I can’t learn anything! and then doing weird things like booting up my laptop in the brake shop. Kinda like your alcoholic uncle rifling through the fridge and downing a jar of maraschino cherries with a chaser of vanilla extract.
This “unplugging” thing people talk of? I don’t really do it. I work at home and my computer is always on, always connected.
That advice to batch email checking and only do it once or twice a day? Never thought it applied to me.
I never thought I suffered from Internet hangovers because I’m never offline long enough to get the shakes.
So this weekend will be an interesting experiment.
Remaining conscious and noticing what’s going on will be key.
I don’t know how I’ll feel about it — I’ll have to experience it first. Right now I’m OK, but of course I’m still online, and that’s about to change.
Have you ever tried an experiment with batching email, limiting internet access, or intentionally unplugging? How did it go for you? What did you notice? I’d love to hear about it in the comments (but I may not reply until Monday!!).
