Exile

Last night was my first night back after an imposed 1 week exile from the internet.
Yeah well ok the cable gets shut off when you miss a couple of months.
I wasn't in any big hurry though as I realized early on that I really was not missing anything.
I was able to *gasp* find other things to do.
In fact, if I didn't need it for my job there is a pretty good chance I wouldn't have been so eager to get it back. Sure I missed out on some important things when I needed to do them.
Not many though.
Sure I had a few nights when I was floundering around thinking there was something I was supposed to be doing but couldn't quite put my finger on it.
Small bits of shiny tinfoil and jangling car keys in front of my face made those thoughts dissipate quickly enough.
It was nice seeing the faces of my family again instead of just the tops of their heads as their faces were buried in their iPods, laptops and TV shows. I'm no angel (or angle, whichever) though I gotta admit I spend more time than I thought I did staring off into the electroincal abyss.
It's easy to not go online if you are actually doing something where it is not available like camping or whatever. Not really a big challenge in that your mind is otherwise occupied with lots of other stuff.
Try it for a week when you have nothing else on your plate and see how you fair.
When there is nothing standing between you and the tossing of flatware at the wall to see what interesting patterns emerge.
Try to avoid the MYFace stumbleupon yahoobing googleytubeing trap-hazard that lurks beneath the keyboard then.
I am going to do it more often... right after I answer all my email.