Life Without the Internet

A nor’easter hit the Northeast on the Sunday before last. Had it brought snow, who knows how bad the damage might have been. As it was, the winds (hurricane-strength in some areas) knocked down trees and power lines all over the place.

Our lights flickered, but we did not lose power for any extended period of time. We were very lucky. Not everyone else was. My sister-in-law lost power for several days. Our kids got two days off from school as the town struggled to get the power back on.

But our Internet was out for at least four days, leaving me cut off from the blog, my e-mail, my Facebook and Twitter feeds, Netflix, and also my workplace. Our telephone was out, too. I barely get a cell phone signal here, so I had to walk down the driveway just to call my boss and let her know I was offline.

It was strange to be cut off from the outside world like that. I had no idea what was happening out there in the world. I had this terrible, nagging feeling of things going bad at work. There was no way to know, and the whole episode made me realize how pathetically dependent we are on our wi-fi.

There was one benefit, though. Without the Internet to distract me, it was fairly easy to make myself sit down and write. I started NaNoWriMo on time. I didn’t write nearly enough, but at least it was something. I have written every day since.

Except today. I just don’t feel like it. I thought that maybe if I sat down in front of the computer I could convince myself to write. And I did, only I wrote this, which is not what I needed to be doing.

I’m not going to wish for more Internet or power outages. That would be stupid. But I do hope that I can learn to ignore the Internet when I don’t need it. I shouldn’t allow it to distract me from the things that are more important!