Technophile Discovers Life

A snafu last week led to a major change in my routine behavior.

It was a simple and small accident, the kind of thing I should be used to by now, klutzy as I am: I left my laptop charger at school.

This led me to be without Internet access for an evening I’ve dubbed Unplugged Sunday. Now I’m considering adopting this “accident” as a new way of approaching work/life at least once per week, and suggest that like-minded folks do the same.

Technophiles, I’m talking to you. There could be $350 in it for you. There was for me.

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I didn’t discover my goof until I’d settled in at The Archive, a cafe near my place in Brooklyn — a full 40-minute train ride from school, which would only get longer as it grew later. My laptop had virtually no battery power left. Just enough to send out an e-mail to ensure that someone would grab my charger and hold on to it until I could get it the next day.

My plan for the evening was completely thrown off. In fact, my whole routine for working, communicating and turning in for the night had been virtually destroyed. But instead of getting upset about it and trying to achieve the same tasks with different tools (pretty much impossible when your task is programming), I let go of my plans and focused on the opportunities around me at present.

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So often it seems like my life consists solely of what happens as I move from one virtual workstation to the next. I wake up, perform tasks on my computer at home, shower and dress, go to school, perform different kinds of tasks on my computer during class, move into the lounge or library, perform other kinds of tasks after class, eat, perform another set of tasks on my computer, eat again, perform tasks again, head back to Brooklyn, spend time with my boyfriend, go home, shower and undress, and perform other tasks on my computer before going to bed and starting the whole process again in the morning.

If you didn’t catch it, these are the things that didn’t involve being in front of my computer: showering and dressing/undressing, commuting, eating, transitioning from one space to another, spending time with my boyfriend, sleeping. Sure, there are some errands and real-life conversations and drinks with friends thrown in there from time to time, but that’s pretty much my average day. I’m almost constantly plugged in.

The very fact that I feel the need to take note of my night without a laptop is indicative of just how severe my Internet dependence has become. To those in the same boat, I offer up my little story. The changes weren’t huge and the results weren’t astounding, but it was a positive experience that maybe you can have, too.

Here’s what I did between 9 p.m. on Unplugged Sunday and noon on Monday (after which I headed to school)…

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Sunday, 9 p.m.

What I would have done: Checked my e-mail.

What I did: Spent time with my roommate.

The first change was easy, but a big deal for me. One of my roommates was home. We never see each other and, in general, I’m pretty distanced from the other members of our household because I’m either gone or working. So instead of heading to my little alcove of a room to do my homework, I asked if she wanted to go get some drinks and dessert.

She wasn’t feeling well, so she declined my offer. Determined to use my evening of techlessness toward the end of human contact, I asked if I could join her in watching TV online. She said sure. Turned out it was a show I’d been curious about since I moved here, from a critical standpoint. From the ubiquitous subway ads I saw, it seemed like an indicator of the sad state of U.S. values and entertainment: Dirty Sexy Money.

Now, I won’t lie. That half-hour interaction was really more like a silent cohabitation of space. It wasn’t all that dissimilar from our usual kind of non-interaction, and I don’t think I made any strides in bridging the roommate gap. But at least I made an attempt, and for one moment we were sharing the same experience. I also learned that Dirty Sexy Money is actually a vehicle of commentary on fame, fortune and vice in general. Who knew?? Not me.

Sunday, 9:30 p.m.

What I would have done: Programmed.

What I did: Exercised.

Without a computer there to act as an extension of myself when communicating and otherwise getting work done, I was forced to consider my physical self. The number of times I’ve taken a moment to even think about my body has dropped significantly since I moved to New York. So many things just seem to be so much more important than thinking about what kind of health and shape I’m in. This has actually been pretty detrimental to me, since I’m supposed to be doing physical therapy exercises for my torn ACL. So I took some time out to do my PT moves and threw in some crunches and girlie pushups, too. Not really enough to even get my heartrate up, but it was something. If nothing else, it helped me to become more aware of the general state of my body. Pretty important stuff.

Sunday, 9:45 p.m.

What I would have done: Blogged or e-mailed my negative feelings, passing the blame onto someone else.

What I did: Thought through my feelings until a more rational response became clear.

It’s not entirely uncommon for me to be struck with feelings of rejection and regret for no reason at all. It’s something I’ve been dealing with for quite some time now. As I was considering what to do next in my unplugged evening, such feelings struck me in full force, spurring a bit of a panic about the state of one or more of my relationships.

Usually, I would turn to social networks, chats, or blogs for solace not long after identifying these feelings. Maybe I would write my own whiny blog post about it. Maybe I would even write an e-mail to the people involved. In all of these scenarios, the end result would have been a temporary feeling of closure not backed by any actual resolution to the real or perceived problem.

Because I didn’t have a network of shoulders to cry on at a moment’s notice, I was forced to consider my feelings. Having nothing better to do, I chose to spend a good while meditating on my feelings and trying to understand why my opinions about these relationships had become independent of the reality of the situations (in other words, emotionally cyclical). I came to some interesting conclusions that have already served me well.

This process was a million times more productive than spilling my guts immediately just so I could hear someone tell me it would be OK.
Sunday, 10:30 p.m.

What I would have done: Programmed.

What I did: Read a book.

Calmed down, in the mood to read, and feeling a little guilty for ditching schoolwork, I looked around my room for something that would be useful for me to read. My physical computing and programming textbooks wouldn’t be of much use to me in this situation. But I did have a book that was for an assignment that I knew was no more than a couple of weeks down the road: Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics. It helped that I’d started to read it a long time ago but never finished it, so I was genuinely interested in diving in. It was engaging and insightful. I read until I became tired — a feeling I’d forgotten I love.

Sunday, 11:30 p.m.

What I would have done: Entertained myself with social networks, articles, etc…

What I did: Mentally planned my week.

It’s tempting to fill the lazy pre-bedtime hour with videos, chatting, lurking, and casual online reading when you have the means to do so. I often do. But these activities override a natural and very important stage of pre-sleep: contemplating the day and planning for the next one.

So often I’m engaged in an activity immediately before sleeping, either online or off. I forget that there’s more to the closing a day than just falling asleep. Amazing realizations happen in those contempletive moments when you’re laying there in the dark, eyes closed and head on pillow. Reminders pop up from the back of your conscience. The overpoweringly stressful events of the day are lessened in force by remembered moments of beauty.

I ended up making a mental list of tasks I probably wouldn’t have remembered when fully awake, when my mind is busy devouring the visual information around me. My usual waking panic about what to do and when was pushed aside as I sorted through my priorities slowly and calmly. I drifted off to sleep content that I’d made good use of myself that day, and would the next, as well.

Monday, 12 – 2 a.m

What I would have done: Slept.

What I did: Slept.

(Not everything has to be different…)
Monday, 2 -5 a.m.

What I would have done: Searched for companionship and entertainment online.

What I did: Cleaned and read.

In a rare bout of insomnia, I woke up from a dream at 2 a.m. and was completely unable to fall back asleep. Normally I’d pass such stretches of oddly-timed lucidity by messing around on social networks, reading and writing email, watching videos and reading articles. Since none of those were an option, I took advantage of my late-night energy boost by cleaning my roommate’s litter box (she was out of town) and finishing up Understanding Comics.

Rather than just filling the hours with arbitrary activities, I actually made use of my physical and mental self, accomplishing two things that I would have needed to take care of eventually, anyway.

Monday, 5 – 11 a.m

What I would have done: Slept.

What I did: Slept.

(And had a really awful dream, too. Boo.)

Monday, 11 – 11:30 a.m.

What I would have done: Eaten cereal, checked e-mail and read articles online.

What I did: Exercised, ate cereal and took my vitamins.

Well rested and emboldened by all that I’d accomplished during my Unplugged Sunday, I continued the trend of paying attention to my body on my Still Unplugged Monday. That’s right, I exercised — again! This kind of back-to-back intentional physical exertion has happened only a handful of times in my lazy life, so it’s quite the accomplishment for me. I ate breakfast as usual, but I also took my vitamins, which I tend to forget in my usual rush from workstation to workstation. I wouldn’t be surprised if both of those had a hand in my thereafter chipper mood.

Monday, 11:30 a.m. – 12 p.m.

What I would have done: Get ready to leave very slowly while trying to do things online.

What I did: Sort through my snail mail.

And now maybe the most beneficial experience of all….

When I first got to New York, I was living in a sublet and had all of my Florida mail forwarded there. During the move from my sublet to my more permanent place, the items I’d received in the last week or so were shoved in a box that was shifted from one side of my room to another.

Without my computer as my constant point of focus, I was able to pay attention to my surroundings more acutely and address the needs of what was most immediate to me. Checking the mail was the task I’d been putting off the longest, and since I knew it could be important, that’s what I did.

Most of it was bills I’d already paid online, but two of the items just happened to be checks. Big checks, as it turned out. I had no idea, but I had overpaid two of my bills back home in my attempt to square away everything in advance. The checks were from the cable company and my former car loan company, and they amounted to $350. It was at that point that I knew that Unplugged [X]day was a tradition that must stay in place.

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When you compare the dull signal of something like a piece of mail sitting on your desk to the blaring, blinking, moving, changing signals of e-mail on your laptop, the laptop always wins. Things online seem more important because they’re calling out to you in some way, often in huge, constantly-updated numbers.

In the real world, objects often aren’t engineered to be so ceaselessly captivating. Outside of the uber-consciously constructed and designed world of the Internet, the strength of the signal doesn’t necessarily correspond to the importance of what’s being transmitted. Snail mail only tells you that it’s there once: the moment you open your mailbox. After that, it’s just an object, sitting on your desk, waiting for you to reveal its contents. But this mundane object can hold contents far greater than most e-mail (my acceptance letter from NYU, for example).

This is a struggle between real and virtual lives that carries over to interpersonal relationships, too. Why is it that I will pay a great deal of attention to the acquaintance who constantly IMs me online, but not give much more than a nod to my roommates as I walk in the door? It’s certainly not that I care more about the acquaintance. It’s that he/she is more actively pursuing my attention, literally obstructing my view of what I’m trying to do, whether it be for work or pleasure.

In real life, communication doesn’t happen this way — and for good reason. Imagine how obnoxious it would be if my roommates were constantly coming into my room and shoving themselves between me and my computer screen to ask small questions. Or to just say “hey” and then sit there, waiting for me to respond. It would drive me nuts! Yet that’s the kind of behavior that we put up with (and perform) every day online.

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I feel like I should be calling for some kind of action at this point. Some revolution of social interaction online. Maybe someday I will, but right now I just want to share my story, and hear what others think. So please, let me know. Share your own story. Tell me that mine’s absurd (I certainly recognize the sheltered privilege involved in it). Or tell me it’s great and that you’re going to unplug once a week, too. I know I will.