Internet Abstinence

I was inadvertently thrown into this assignment when I moved houses, and we were a bit lazy with setting up our new utilities. Needless to say, we were without Internet for SIX days. I am a very "techie" person, and to be without the constant connection to everything, was very disconcerting. I never realized how much the Internet was ingrained into my everyday patterns. The very first thing I do when I wake up is go to my computer, open Pandora, check email, and browse CNN.com. Not being able to do my morning ritual was extremely frustrating, I felt out of touch all day long. Of course, Michael Jackson decides to die on one of the days I don't have Internet, so I can't confirm the text from a friend. I was so lost without Internet that I didn't even know the name of the local gas company to call and start service. But how would I call them? I don't have Internet so I can't look them up, and I'm positive we don't have a phone book, I was straight up lost. Over the course of six days, I went to the library once to use their Internet, and that was to see what the assignment was due for the first week. Imagine my surprise when I realized it was to go without Internet for a day. How about a week! I literally was so bored, I had nothing to do other than to keep moving stuff from our old house. Luckily, that took up about 25 hours of my time, so I was relatively busy. In my downtime, I tried watching movies on my computer, but it's never fun to see the same movie more than once. I had brought some books from home and decided to reread one. Or two. Working on the third book now. I read the first two books in one day, almost in one sitting. I found suddenly that I had much more time to spend reading. I guess I didn't realize how much time I spent reading random articles online and wasting time surfing the web. I don't think it's time wasted however, I'm learning more than I would reading a book. I love stumbling upon articles about quantum mechanics and black holes and string theory, the large and grand cosmic scale of these phenomenon just blow me away. Not having access to articles is extremely frustrating. I don't even want to talk about Facebook, I've already gotten over that addiction and found it just barely frustrating. Mainly because I have my Facebook "notifications" sent to my iPhone, so I can keep up to date. I think the biggest thing I learned by taking this Internet ciesta has been how much I rely on the Internet for information. My car wouldn't start because the battery was drained (by a drunken Tyler fidiling with the overhead dome light trying to find a piece of paper) and but had just enough juice to let the alarm go off for 15 minutes. I had a couple guesses why it wouldn't start, but I couldn't even look on the Internet to validate any of my theories. So in retrospect, the Internet is definitely an integral part of who I am, and it has transparently shaped my life in many ways that I can only just now see.