Being Unplugged

We’re about 48 hours into our internet outage and it’s looking like it will be a number of days before access will be restored again. At this stage it’s unclear what is causing the problem – or at least there are no definitive root causes we’ve identified – however the current theories are either a fault with our modem or a problem with the exchange that our ISP relies upon as an upstream provider.

In the wake of this it’s been interesting to observe how our habits and routines have changed. I wrote yesterday of how access to information has been affected, but it’s been the entertainment aspects of our day to day existence that have been the most affected – not necessarily in a bad way though.

I must say that it’s been quite surprising how easily I’ve transitioned to a general lack of web connectivity. Certainly access via my phone has meant connectivity has not been severed completely, and I’m able to check and compose email, post Twitter updates, post to my blog by way of Posterous and in a basic way perform web searches – and yet in many ways the removal of access from my desktop machine has in fact proven relaxing, and I’m embracing the unplugged lifestyle to a fair degree.

It’s not so much what I’ doing is substantially different to what I do other times, but I have noticed my overall stress levels have dropped considerably, as has my typical sense of excessive urgency about everything and I’m far more relaxed than usual. This is not to say that I’m not looking forward to having our access restored, more that this experience has really highlighted the importance and benefit of being offline and digitally inaccessible some of the time.

Posted via email from Mike Bogle