Cut off from the World!

On Thursday (June 26^th), I was cut off from the internet! This event was supposed to be on of my own doing, but was actually forced upon me by my own circumstances. I had to drive down to Corvallis to move and I had cancelled my Comcast account. So there I was in my old apartment all by myself with no cable or internet and only my phone to make me feel somewhat connected to the rest of the world. This is an even more severe situation than the original idea of cutting me off from the internet for 24 hours. There were a few times that I really wanted to go onto the internet! It’s amazing how much we feel like we need the internet these days. I also felt the silence of my apartment to be alarming at a certain point and needed to have a movie on while I packed. It made me realize how television has become a way that I feel connected to humans and it makes a space feel familiar to me (OMG, how sad is that?).

In the afternoon, I had pushed a wooden desk and miscellaneous items onto the sidewalk for people to take, kind of a moving free stuff deal. 3 hours had passed and no one had taken the desk and I knew that it was because it’s hard to take a desk home with you and people would need to know about it in advance and drive their vehicle over to get it. I had to text my friend and tell him to post a ad on Craig’s list(does that count as cheating?) well anyhow, I felt this panic feeling like “oh no I can’t do this!” and it made me feel helpless and I have to say it was a really weird feeling to have over the internet!

I also usually pass the time by playing around on the internet, so that made it very hard to delay the whole moving process and made me work even harder. I can spend so much time on the computer (and TV) wasting my precious time until the day goes by and I have gotten nothing done. It was nice in the long run to not have a diversion. I actually found myself doing other things like walking over to the neighbor’s yard and feeding their chickens (yes, my neighbor’s have chickens) and sitting on my porch and looking out over the neighborhood drinking some java. I actually warmed up to the silence and enjoyed the last day in my apartment.

This was a very enlightening experience. I realize how much the computer and TV (and other new entertaining technology) can easily be a major distraction in our everyday life. You realize how much of your time you give to these things once you have to fill the holes. Neil Postman, author of Technopoly, talks about how technology is both a burden and a blessing. In this experience I have been subjected to both how technology is a burden in my life and a blessing. It is a blessing that I can post an ad on Craig’s list and get rid of my unwanted items. It is a burden when it becomes a form of entertainment and communication that takes up a big part of my life.