Yesterday morning I woke up to the home WIFI not working. Because I rent, and all utilities are included, I don’t control nor have access to the Internet modem. I’m an incredibly early riser, so I wasn’t about to wake up my friend and landlord upstairs at 6:30 AM in the morning, just so I can have Internet. It will have to wait until he has woken up, and realizes the WIFI connection has stopped.
At least I still had cellular network on my iPhone. I can never quit you, twitter!
It turns out I didn’t really need the Internet for the first two hours of my morning. Indeed, I did use my phone to check the socials for a bit. After that, I didn’t bother to tether the phone to the MacBook Pro, even though I could (my cellular plan is unlimited). Lacking an Internet connection, I wrote my morning blog in Microsoft Word instead of directly onto the Squarespace CMS, as I am doing now. And then I read a book until breakfast.
The Internet has given us many wonderful things; it’s good to be reminded that I don’t have to be completely reliant on it to function normally. My morning didn’t get ruined just because the WIFI was down. It reminds me back when I lived with my parents, when I was in charge of the home Internet. Whenever the system was down, I’d immediately get a knock on my door from my parents informing me of such. As if they couldn’t bare to be without connectivity for one minute.
Sometimes I would wryly retort that they should go read a book, or do something non-digital (have a conversation with each other, perhaps). Not having Internet for the 10 minutes it takes for the modem to reboot is going to be just fine. Take a breath! At home we either stare at our phone or the computer screen constantly, so it’s good to have breaks from it from time to time. Even if said break is induced by nonfunctioning equipment.
Suspended animation.