My week without the internet

I feel bad about depriving my loyal readership of six or seven people of their daily dose of news about Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, not to mention the macro photography of erotic scenes painted on grains of rice they have come to expect. I have my reasons for the silence however; inspired by a documentary I saw on the Amish, I decided to unplug for a whole week, and lucky for you, I kept a diary of the whole ordeal...

My week without the internet

Day 1:

9:22 AM: So I’ve finally decided to do it. No Internet for seven days. Figure I would be capable of so much if I didn’t spend so much time on Gawker and Celebritysighting.com.
Like a surgeon, I open up my laptop, lift out the beating heart its wireless connection, and hide it from myself.

12:01 PM: Sit outside and look at trees. Wonder what kind of tree that is in my backyard. Or why plants grow toward the sun. Or why the sun circles the earth. Or what ancient cultures thought the world was round. Or whether Earth, Wind, and Fire ever wrote a song about the sun, and whether I should write about it for when I can update my blog again. Redouble effort to read entirety of Proust. Wonder why they changed the name of Remembrance of Things Past. Wish I could still use Google. I’d only need it for 10 minutes. Know I must resist.

Day 2:

9AM: First day of work without Internet. Explain to boss I won’t be online. But you’re a web designer, he says. You don’t have to surf the web to be a great designer, I reply. But what about Outlook? I say to him that all of us sit in a big round open space. We can just shout back and forth.

Day 3:

Days at work seem long. Have much time to sit and think. Hours seem sharply delineated and endless. Pain in head getting worse.

Day 5:

10:50 PM: Take a copy of Cook’s Illustrated to a local watering hole, where I sit and nurse a Jack and Coke and pour over directions for a crown rack of lamb. Some dude comes up to me and asks if he can buy me a drink. I want to say, what is this, the ‘70’s? but he does seem cute and nice. Realize I have dated anyone I’ve met IRL, as it were, since 2004.

We end up talking about all sorts of things, the Great Wall of China and skateboarding. Why there’s no nutrition in celery. It’s the most stimulated I’ve been for, well, weeks. At the end of the conversation, he asks for my email. I tell him I’m not using the Internet for a month, and my various reasons for my decision, and maybe I went on too long, because this look came over his face and he said: If you don’t want to see me again, you don’t have to be sneaky about it. I said, wait, you can have my phone number. I’ll make you a rack of lamb! But by then he’s gone. Some people are just insecure.

Day 7:

Some things that people might not be aware of about old-timey hobbies: knitting takes a lot of patience. The costs of setting up a blacksmithing shop are prohibitive. And beekeeping? Let’s not talk about beekeeping.

Now, where did I put my wireless card?