No Internet

I came home yesterday with my internet down. I called Charter, my ISP, and the customer rep tried a few tests, which all failed, and concluded that a technician would have to come to my house and check it out. This tech won’t come until tomorrow, so for the past two days I’ve been without internet at my home. For the most part, I’ve been totally fine without it, which completely surprised me. Well, for one, I do still have my cell phone, which I’ve used as a hotspot on my laptop. I’m not going to let a little internet downtime prevent me from blogging, but I do also have the means to get some internet when I need it. But second of all, I can’t do much of my usual web browsing on just a limited LTE connection. I can’t watch videos, for example, and videos were and will be soon my most time consuming unproductive activity that I do. So instead of watching TV, I’ve been listening to podcasts or music while I ate, or pulling out my Confidant notebook and writing notes about my novel, or going to bed a little earlier, or working out a little earlier, or reading a little more. In short, I feel like I’ve been more productive these past two days than I normally do, and that’s awesome.

A few years ago, when I first moved into my studio apartment, I consciously decided that I didn’t want to get internet for my home. I was in deep minimalist mode back then, so I tried to live with only the essentials, and the internet wasn’t one of them. I, again, did have my cell phone, which I used to create a hotspot, but back then, I only had 300 MB a month to use. Needless to say, I didn’t use the internet that much. I lasted about three months, and I sometimes miss those days because I read so much at that time. I read so much because I had the time to read. I wasn’t distracted by YouTube or Hulu or Netflix or a million different time-consuming distractions on the internet. It was a more peaceful time back then. Now, though? I need a constant internet connection to live my life. It’s insane.

I’ve been focusing more of my time toward my novel. My novel sucks. It has always sucked, and that’s something I really want to change. I feel I can produce something much better than what I have right now. I know I can. I can feel it in my bones. But, the problem is, I haven’t done that yet. That’s something I want to change, and I think I’m slowly building up a habit where I can spend more time on this that’ll actually stick in the long run. Today, I guess, is technically day 3 of this habit, so I don’t know for sure what I’ll be doing a week from now. I hope to still be doing all I can to produce the best damn work of my life, with or without the internet.

Sometime’s life’s little annoyances can reveal something beneficial and fortuitous. It all depends on my perspective. And what I want to do is get shit done, and that’s all I care about right now. That’s all I’m allowing myself to care about because life’s too short to worry about not having internet at home right now.