Day One without Internet

When I first wake up in the morning, there’s a click in my brain. It’s a default that I listen to every morning without fail, at the same hour every day, like a perfectly scheduled school day. The thought invades my brain even though I know every wireless component in my place is deactivated. Before I even get dressed, hop in the shower, and brush my teeth, I simply must do something because the habit is so ingrained in me.

The mantra: Check email.

I rise slowly from my slumber. My feet pad their way over to my desk, where I sit at the computer as always. Even though my screen reader tells me it has no wireless connection, I still perform the familiar task of pressing the Windows key and R and then typing in Thunderbird, where my email is stored on a server. When the program loads, I see all of my old email messages. I know what’s supposed to happen next. The client is supposed to connect to the server and display my new emails. But nothing happens.

I wait for the bold, unread messages to trickle into my inbox. They might contain replies from my editor and a host of emails, wanted and unwanted.

Nothing happens, but I want to see the emails in my inbox. I open the client again and then close it again, repeating the process just so I can have something to look at. I haven’t spent even three hours offline, and already, I’m completely lost.

I soon give up on making an internet connection spring from thin air without any wireless or Ethernet drivers in my laptop. I sit down on my bed. I call Marcus.

His voice is scratchy from sleep. “Hello?”

“Hi!” I’m feeling good now. At least I’m having some sort of connection with a human being in the morning.

“What’s up, Robbie?” He sounds a bit more awake and a bit worried. “You never call me.”

“I know. I’m having a problem.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“Well, I can’t check my email.”

I know some people, many of whom grew up before Twitter and even before the computer generation, who see the bad side of the internet. But they don’t see the good that it also brings—-for instance, with email.

Email spares us from awkward pauses or, indeed, any pauses at all. An email reply can be composed over time, ensuring that people can include all the information they want in one central place. Plus, you don’t see at the bottom of emails, “Please write me back at your earliest convenience. Here’s my address.” You can just hit a few keys to compose a reply.

Although phone calls may have been quicker in some respects, they just weren’t a convenient way for me to send or receive information, mainly because my brain isn’t wired that way. From my narrow-minded perspective, people just won’t provide me with as much information when they talk to me over the phone.

Throughout the day, I do various things to keep my mind busy simply because I don’t have emails to keep me occupied. The day rolls out in a mesh of activities. I flit back and forth between them as if I’m clicking on hyperlinks. I read. I watch TV. I begin listening to some audiobooks I’ve had on my Victor Reader Stream for years. I walk around my apartment complex and talk to people I would usually avoid, mainly because I don’t have any emails to answer. No one calls me on the phone or sends me a text, so I’m left to my own devices. The day passes by really well. Really well indeed.

I haven’t settled into a routine yet. I’m all over the place. I’m sure the wind is laughing behind my back as I go from talking to someone on the elevator to imagining what shammy subject lines are in my inbox. I feel a bit nutty because I really, really want to delete these messages.

Even though today was fine, and even though I contacted Marcus, I feel a sense of withdrawal. Will this feeling escalate, leaving me in a forest as I murmur URLs to the trees? Or will I overcome this withdrawn feeling? I hope to find out soon.