Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue

It's been a weird experience living for 2 weeks without any easy means of Internet access except my shifts at work.  I thought I would miss so much but my own worry was limited to concerns over urgent e-mails and being able to keep in touch with the professors I work for with all the GWS events coming up this term.

But with Lacie-sitting, I've had fast Web at my fingertips all this weekend and will all this week as well.  Fred and I think we've figured out a way to vanquish the mighty Comcast demons and get access in our apartment sometime soon.  And you know what?  I don't want it.

The past few years my biggest time-waster to the tenth degree (literally) was the Internet.  Random things, cool things, things to read and see and look at that linked to other cool things.  Online stories, comics, news, everything.  Fascinating books I can occasionally put down and hide in the corner under a pillow.  And even the best books don't have 10 sequels in the back cover.

But when I was web-less in the apartment, I got things done.  I went to bed and woke up at reasonable hours.  I wasn't late for the train because I wanted to look at one last thing before I left.  I had to face my loneliness and isolation and unsettled feelings head on instead of subsuming them in some morass of online entertainment.  I felt more awake because my eyes weren't strained from late hours in front of the computer.  I got more knitting done.

And now?  I was up late doing something last night because needing e-mail and access to some research sites for what I was working on somehow led to remembering sites I hadn't checked on since mid-March and getting caught up with all of it.  Never missed them before, but there it was.  And now, RIGHT NOW?  Lacie wants me to throw my ball for the next 20 minutes until I leave for class and I am sitting here typing this out.

I know I need the Internet in my place.  I know I need to keep up to date with my e-mails, class cancellations, and other news (particularly if I get the job I'm interviewing for tomorrow).  I know I'll need to do research, lots of research, for my papers this term- checking references, facts, finding new articles and sources and requesting books online.  I know this.  But I still want a way to shut it all off- to be restricted to dial-up to guarantee that only the most essential things will get done- to have some master setting that I can't undo that will prevent fun things from showing up on Firefox.  Unplugging the ethernet cable doesn't work- I think of something I just have to peek at really quick before I go back to work and 90 minutes later I'm still taking one last peek.

Lacie deserves better.  I deserve better.  All the things I need to get done- for my future, the quality of my current life, my classes, my Fred- deserve better.  So why does it keep sucking me in?

Current Location: Lacie's House
Current Mood: aggravated
Current Music: "All the Things She Said" t.A.T.u.