I awoke this morning in my usual way, consciousness unfolding over a few minutes, a new day stealing away the foggy remains of my thin, early-morning dreams. As had become my custom of late, I reached for my phone, and went through the motions of checking my email, checking NPR, checking the weather forecast, and then finally, checking Twitter. As had been my habit for months, I mindlessly scrolled through my feed, and allowed the pithy, the witty, and the snarky bring me to full awareness.

As I brewed my first cup of coffee (the absolute first thing done after becoming upright each morning) I did not realize anything was amiss. Just as well that I lived in innocent contentedness for as long as possible, because now that I am fully living through this day without internet, I feel myself ever nearer to complete hopelessness. Hopelessness that I will ever again be part of the 21st century, with the magic of trillions of combinations of 0s and 1s connecting me to (well, I would have said humanity, but then I remembered how I start every day on Twitter) others. Other people who are lucky enough (or who made sound enough decisions when it really mattered) to live in places where the internet doesn’t just inexplicably vanish for whole days at a time. Other people who blithely go about their lives as though all the technological advances of the past 50 years don’t just up and disappear unexpectedly.

Oh, to have had the internet this morning! There is a new Masterchef Australia waiting for me, and watching the newest episode while enjoying my first cup of coffee of the day is one of my favorite spring weekend and summer everyday routines. Just yesterday I got back into Masterchef Australia Season 9, and I am feeling utterly robbed of the choice to while away many hours with the amazing cooks and chef mentors from Down Under. To think that I may go a whole day without their curious accents and charming turns of phrase is almost too much to contemplate.

To be fair, an internet outage this long has not happened in some time. Whenever I do find myself sans connection, I wonder about how I ever passed the time before all the entertainment I could ever hope for was within reach every second of every day. I actually lived in this house when we didn’t have internet, and I still cannot picture what the hell I did with myself. I guess I was a young mother to very young babies back then, so I imagine that kept me pretty busy. But still. 

There is something unsettling about my obsession over my internet connection. The promise of it returning just as mysteriously as it left remains to torture my psyche. Is it back yet? Let me hit refresh. No? Here, I’ll check my phone. Will Pinterest load yet? Hit refresh again. Hmm. Give it another minute. One more time, switch wifi off and then back on. OK. Maybe it’s time to head into town. A good workout at the gym is just what’s needed to clear my head. Before I head out, though, just one more time, refresh just one more time…Nope. Damn.

As soon as I got home from the gym, I tried Pinterest to no avail. It wasn’t until hours later that I realized the Amazon Prime page on my laptop refreshed. I jumped right over to Pinterest, and sure enough, there were those stylized and glossy pins Just for Me flooding onto my Pinterest homepage. I heaved a mighty sigh of relief and of gratitude that finally, at long last, life could continue.

It wouldn’t be so bad to be without the internet for awhile. I really don’t think I’d mind that. It’s the not-knowing, not being able to prepare for it, that is so uncomfortable for me. Mentally speaking, it would be a much different experience with a little heads-up. (I suppose life generally would be different with a little heads-up, but not necessarily for the better). I just need to be better at adapting, and quicker about it, too. By 3:00, I had finally resigned myself to a wifi-free night, and I baked brownies and prepped Korean zucchini instead. I listened to a podcast and played Dots, happily. Around 4:30, the internet was back and within minutes I was fully engaged with the latest Masterchef episode, my contentedness of moments before forgotten. Is there a lesson learned from this day? I guess that there’s hope for a life beyond the dimensions of my computer and phone screens, and that it might do me good to experience more of that, from time to time. Just maybe after this season’s Masterchef finale.