I work from home. I manage several social media accounts, and I write four or five blogs a week, various case studies, workbooks, web copy, and some fiction. I have a system. I’m organized. I get stuff done. But today, Tuesday 11/11/20, the internet’s down.
Noooooo! The Internet’s down!
What about my Smartphone?
Well, yes, technically, I have internet access, but it’s not the same. I mean – the internet’s down. Right now, my laptop isn’t much more than a word processor. I can’t do research. I can’t get to my editorial calendar on Google+. WordPress is unavailable to me. I have a file of blog ideas and outlines, but I can’t access the links. I can’t get to my blog. The internet’s down.
What CAN I do?
So far, most of what I have done has been counterproductive; whining doesn’t reconnect the internet faster, does it? Can’t-can’t-can’t. And the TV is offline too! It could be worse; I’ve already written three of the five blogs for the week and completed most of my social media tasks. I can write about what I know. I’ll write posts that don’t need that mean old’ internet. Okay, where do I start?
However, I wasn’t feelin’ it. I decided to read for a while. But wait! An idea for a blog post came to me.
What I did
So, after reading for 20 or 30 minutes, I had two ideas and wrote rough drafts of them both, and there’s the point. A friend and I recently discussed how spoiled we all are by Al Gore’s invention. We’ve gone from rotary dial phones to instant access to all the information in the world, and when we lose that access, we act like petulant children. But the internet is down…but…but the internet’s down. We didn’t always have the internet. We used to do things to be inspired, like read. I think I’ll add that to my editorial calendar for Tuesday’s. I’ll schedule time to read, and think, and reboot. Hopefully, the internet won’t go down afterward because what would I do? What do you do when the internet goes down?
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Such a great post! It really is true that when we’re “offline” I think we feel like we’re in some dramatic movie scene after a horrendous event and we’re just holding our lives in our arms waiting for that last… breath… of information… that’s no longer available at the ends of our keyboard.
As I’m reading your post I thought of two things. Why aren’t more services created with an “offline” mode in mind. Why shouldn’t I be able to pull up my existing Google calendar in its entirety even if my Internet is offline. Couldn’t I set my browsers to remember a collection of pages who’s data may change frequently, but at least having a static view of it’s last version would be more helpful than being completely offline. I feel like my phone works like that doesn’t it?
The other thought I had was regularly reminding ourselves that there’s life “offline”. Perhaps forced and scheduled periods where the routers are turned off in the house. The only “connections” we use and value are those with each other, a book, a hands-on project, exercise, maybe even a nap.
Great points. “Why shouldn’t I be able to pull up my existing Google calendar in its entirety even if my Internet is offline?” Good question.