Offline: When Five Days Feels Like an Eternity

It has been a while since I last wrote a post.

Not because I have been lazy or slacking off, but because our Internet service "broke" on last Friday morning.

Whereas being without service is not uncommon around here, the "fix" is usually made within minutes to a couple of hours, at most.

Not so, this time.

Service Calls and Automation Jail...

So when the service wasn't back up after waiting several hours and going through the normal "shut down/re-start" of the equipment — to no avail — I put in a call to our service provider.

It has evidently been a while since I last called, because they have added a new automated answering system that makes it almost impossible to actually talk to a live tech support person.

I almost gave up... but remembered that most of these systems will kick you out to a receptionist if you just press "0" enough times.

Eventually, I was patched through to the tech support people.

And Covid Takes its Toll

On a daily basis, there are small things that remind me how much this whole Covid thing has disrupted our lives. Actually, some of them are not so small.

The phone rep I finally talked to apologized for the background noise, because she happened to be a mom working from home with a couple of small kids in the house. That's new. Well, sort of. Sign of our times, anyway.

After she was unable to do any kind of remote reset over the phone, she said they would have to send out a technician to have a look at the problem. So how long was that going to take?

Remember, this was Friday morning, at about 9:00am. The earliest time slot for a technician to come out would be Tuesday, meaning we'd have no service for 4-5 days.

"I'm sorry, but due to Covid, we just have fewer technicians willing to do house calls that involve customer contact, and because more people are at HOME and ONLINE all the time, we actually have a GREATER volume of service calls than usual."

Again, sign of the times in which we live.

Time Slows Down!

Now, I don't tend to get "antsy" when I don't have Internet service — even though I make a living mostly online — but the thing I DO become highly aware of is that time seems to move a lot slower when you're not bombarded with constant emails and social media updates.

I ended up working on my art and working on a book I am writing, as well as organizing my big folder of writing outlines... and it was remarkable just how much I could get done in a few hours, absent the "pings" and "dings" of updates interrupting what I was trying to do.

I even had time to stop and watch the birds, outside!

Perhaps there's a lesson to be learned there, concerning our productivity, and how this thing we call "multi-tasking" is really far more of a giant time suck than a time saver.

Anyway, we're back to having service now... but the "break" was a nice reminder to think more carefully about how we spend our times in these days of quarantines and limited mobility. There's a lot of other stuff to do than just stare at the screen!

Hope you're all having a great week!

How about YOU? What do YOU tend to do, when the Internet goes out? Are you spending a lot more time online, these days, due to Covid? As always, comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment-- share your experiences-- be part of the conversation!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — NOT A CROSSPOST!!!)
Created at 20201014 22:35 PDT
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