Confession—I Can’t Work Offline

Living in the countryside, we often have periods without internet. It’s terrible. But it actually makes a little more sense when you see the state of the place we’re living.

From my window, I can see the internet—quaint copper cable, no fibre out here—travel out of the barn, through our gutter, down the wall, across the road in an exposed pipe, across another road in an exposed pipe, underground for a bit, up another barn, through another gutter, down that barn, round the side of that barn, across the ground for a bit, then up a telegraph pole.

The Engineers that connected us used over 100m of copper to connect us to the telegraph pole 65m away. They said it’s the worst site they’ve ever worked on. Which is saying something.

So at any time we could lose the internet for good.

But also, being in the countryside, sometimes it just turns off. For hours.

I run an internet startup and I’ve gotten used to being constantly connected. I respond to support requests in seconds usually. My email’s always open.

Without internet, I get all confused. Sad. Lost, even. It’s very weird actually.

There’s a ton of work I could do offline: write blog posts, send thank you cards, write website copy, sort out personal chores.

But I don’t do any of it.

I totally stop working. I sit there waiting until the router goes green again. I moan constantly. And eventually get back to checking my email like before.

Because I’ve been connected so long I’ve forgotten how to deal with it. I’m used to living in major cities where the internet rarely goes down and there’s a café next door.

It’s amazing how quickly that all changed though. When I was a kid, the internet was barely available. And now it’s involved in most of my life.

I think I need to take an internet sabbatical some day. Just go offline again for a while and see what life’s like.

Maybe I’ll even enjoy it.