Saturday, August 27, 2011

Downtime

I always thought I was one of those people that doesn't need technology.  I did work as a software developer for about ten years, but never felt like I needed to come home and turn on the computer.  It wasn't my passion - I did nerd work for money to pay the mortgage and feed the kids. 

I thought I was the kind of person that could move to the country, to that place in Ohio that borders Indiana where there's no hard-wired internet service.  I thought there would be peace and tranquility in the dead space. 

But our firewall crashed this week and was up for a few minutes but mostly down for the last two days.  I didn't mourn the loss of Facebook.  I missed being here.  I have become in the habit of writing a blog post as a precursor to working on my fiction.  In the evenings mostly, I read your posts.  I used this as an excuse (one of many) not to write the last few days.  If I had known our network would be down for more than a few hours, I would have sucked it up and wrote anyway.  But it didn't work out that way - it appeared to be fixed and then wasn't over and over again. 

I have felt disconnected from people the last few days, a little less than myself for not writing at all, and kind of disappointed at myself that I've become dependent on this thing - the connection.

Just two days ago, just before the crash, I applauded my daughter's teacher for going with an electronic textbook and assignments - that does assume an internet connection.  I needed a medication form for my child and had to drive to the school to get one.  I needed the phone number for a plumber whose number is no longer in my phone (story for another day), but I threw away all the hard-copy phone books in the house - why do we need a phone book when we have the internet?  My Amazon order hung in limbo.

You may ask, why didn't you go to Starbucks?  I didn't have time and had a small person at my side 24-7 this week - plus my back has been feeling worse.  And, no, I wouldn't have gotten much writing done anyway even if I had been connected.

Now I need to make up for lost time and work on my novel...no excuses today except my aching back.

  

1 comment:

  1. Smiles to you! Don't feel bad. I didn't get any writing accomplished this past week. My fatigue flared up and I did something to my right arm. It's in terrible pain. I think I pulled a muscle.

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