What a waste of money, right? What if I needed to find out something crucial – immediately? What did I do with myself?
Just calm the little flurry of questions in your brain and reserve judgment about this revelation for one minute – I can explain. It all began three months ago on one muggy August evening. I had finished a typically long day at work and came home to have a quick bite, tidy up around my apartment and toss on my favourite oversized t-shirt before crawling into bed. Once tucked waist-up under my covers, happily propped against my headboard, I pulled my computer on to my lap to sift through emails, get some writing done, check the social networks (naturally), etc. You know the drill.
The internet wouldn’t load. Worse than just a weirdly slow connection – the internet was, for some reason, seemingly disconnected. Hardly alarmed, I called in to sort out the problem. They gave me faulty instructions. The internet was still down. For some reason, my moving to Toronto (several months before this) had confused all of my account information and they actually had no evidence of my changing my internet address from Ottawa to Toronto. What this meant was, the internet wasn’t fixed for over a week. And, to what I’m sure is the surprise of many hyper-connected humans reading this, my life didn’t shut down. In fact, it was enriched.
Once internet qualms were resolved – I thought to myself that this would be an interesting social experiment. Test. Personal challenge, if you will. How about I sort of cut the cord in my overly verbal, connected, accessible life and use my after-work hours (which are few, between the time I get home and the time I actually go to sleep) for more meaningful activities. I thought I’d try it for a month or so. I surprised myself and did it for around 90 days.
Let’s keep in mind that, last time I was caught in the middle of an internet nuisance was late October of 2011, while still living in Ottawa. I visited the public library during this time, checked out a few intriguing reads, and emerged a vegan. Needless to say, I was very interested in seeing what my 2012 at-home digital hiatus would do to me.
The ground rules? I allowed myself to check my (very) smart phone for information when absolutely needed, write vital emails, maybe a quick wall post or browse Twitter for news on how long I had before Sandy blew down my high-rise – that’s what the data plan is for, correct? That being said, staring at an incandescent handheld gadget for longer than necessary bothers me – and anyone with a Blackberry knows its speed and functionality limitations. And like Kaylee once said, the feeling of leaving your phone at home can be liberating. So, even that didn’t happen very much. Also, if I had to send something from my Gmail, post a story or blog – I would log in to do just that in the morning. I’m always in such a hurry to get out the door first thing; I don’t have time to do more than is absolutely necessary anyway.
Without further adieu, here are some of the joys of going more-than-wireless for three whole months. Oh, and did I mention I don’t have cable?
1. The joy of reading real books, as opposed to staring at a light bulb for a whole evening: As my fellow book worms nuts can attest – there’s something so soothing about cozying up with a hot drink and turning the page of a real book from under your duvet covers. People often say that after reading all day at work, the last thing they want to do is read more. I disagree. If it’s a great book, getting lost in the words makes the eye and brain effort nearly unnoticeable. During my internetless challenge, I discovered the monstrosity that was the Toronto Reference Library and got lost in the aisles on several lovely Saturday afternoons. I picked through books like Neil Young’s “Waging Heavy Peace”, Nora Ephron’s “Heartburn” and David Foster Wallace’s posthumous collection of essays, “Both Flesh and Not.” Most nights, I could hardly wait to dive in to a story.
2. I was incredibly productive: I do a lot of writing outside of my job. A lot of which requires research, a fact that begs the question – how could I possibly be productive when I can’t readily get hold of the information needed to write a balanced story or juicy blog post? I wasn’t holed up in the library stacks doing that, either, if you’re wondering. There were a few afternoons and evenings when I had to quickly pull up some backgrounder, a few nights spent thumbing at my Blackberry screen to get tidbits and a few lunch hours spent saving a Word document of essential information to a memory stick so that I could get my writing done at night. For the most part, however, I really wasn’t troubled – and rarely got distracted if I needed to check a quick fact. More than that, I found that when it was just me and a blinking cursor, without the rest of the internet commotion to disrupt me, I procrastinated less and achieved much more.
3. I made time for good friends: On the off-chance that I didn’t have any work brought home with me or writing to do, I had the options of watching a movie, reading or puttering around the house. Or, I could pencil in a much-needed catch-up with Kaylee, friends from work, high school pals or drinks with a male friend, perhaps. Why not fill my time with the company of the outstanding people I know and their fantastic conversation? I can learn more worldly and meaningful things from my friends than I can from a Wikipedia page any day.
4. I exercised routinely: I can’t necessarily speak to the exact correlation between internet usage and physical activity (social psychologists, jump in anytime), but I found with the extra time spent offline instead of distracted or inundated with more information – running, swimming or taking a class of sorts five days a week was no problem at all. It became such a comforting, endorphin-boosting part of my routine – and despite being back on the net, I can’t see myself kicking that healthy habit to the curb.
5. I rented movies: Having opted out of cable since moving to Toronto (I’m not home enough to use it, I’m convinced), streaming a series or scanning guilty pleasure websites could be all-too-common (and convenient) occurrences in my household. After I picked through parts of my decent DVD collection (I was surprised at how little I used my TV, still), I found that a trip to Bulk Barn and the stacked movie store two blocks away was one of the best kind of laid back nights to spend with a friend. We forget that movie rental stores even exist in this “surfthechannel” day and age – but something about inspecting the racks of new releases and crouching down to pick through dusty old thrillers is, actually, still so much fun.
6. I felt, overall, quite calm: Have you ever gone on vacation with almost no access to the internet, work email or social networks – and felt weirdly at peace? Have you ever had been networked with a friend, and they – to put it plainly – stress you out? Whether you’ve had a falling out, bad breakup or just an odd interaction, you somehow feel liberated or at peace when you remove them from your news feed or stop seeing them around? Well, eliminate most browsing of the information-loaded, sometimes socially thorny and all-too-personal internet as a whole, and you would be surprised the near relief that you feel. I’m convinced that sometimes, because of it simply being there, people feel the perilous urge to hunt around on the web, open new tabs, check in on people and concern ourselves with matters that we otherwise really wouldn’t choose to. We constantly have the world on a string – the string being a telephone that doubles as a portal to information overload – so add in yet another gateway to the news-crammed and gossipy information age, and it can be mentally exhausting. Scrap that, scrap a lot of stress.
So, now that my experiment is over – I’ve happily revisited the internet at home. I feel…fine. But I also feel enlightened. I’ve discovered exactly what we already know. We all have so much worth exploring outside of the dotcom sphere to let it fall victim to, what really comes down to, an often time-consuming and superficial addiction. The ease and convenience of stepping back out of the dark age (ahem – the age we lived in less than 20 years ago) and into the home page light has been considerable, and don’t get me wrong – I welcome the access. But, I’ve emerged just a little more aware; aware of the fact that I, and we, don’t need a Google search to find what makes you happy.
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