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| Right before we found the herd of groundhogs. Seriously. |
Here’s a first: writing a blog post on my phone. This is not an experience I care to repeat very often, as I’ve just spent a good twenty minutes trying to add a photo to this post (did it work??? how will I even know?), but apparently the problem preventing me from accessing the internet on our home computers won’t be fixed til Thursday at the earliest. So, please, ignore typos and tortured unedited prose.
This shouldn’t throw me off, should it?
I lived through a time before Facebook and Twitter. Heck, I was a stay-at-home mom long before phones got smart. I checked email a couple of times a day, and even that felt obsessive compulsive. I jotted down my kids’ accomplishments in a notebook and took photos on a camera that used film (remember film?), which we would walk uptown to process at a store, waiting for days before picking up the resulting gems or fails.
I used to write more poetry. I wonder if that’s what I did when feeling a pang, a desire to express myself in short form, in a hurry.
And now I blog. On my phone, if need be.
Here’s a short list of everything I would have done online today, if the internet had been available to me: checked the weather network before leaving for spin class; checked email; emailed my mom; checked Facebook; maybe Google news for top headlines; renewed library books; checked weather radar before hanging clothes; processed and uploaded photos; blogged.
Hm.
None of that sounds urgent or life changing.
I hung the laundry anyway (looks sunny).
I texted my mom.
I sort of checked Facebook from my phone, but the slowness made me impatient so I don’t know whether Pickle Me This maybe had her baby while I was away this weekend, or what happened to Rob Ford since last I looked into it, nor did I discover a new favourite calming quote, or read a long-form article by an author I admire, or watch a hilarious video like the one where the couple sing Annie Lennox at the gas station. None of that did my morning contain.
I don’t even want to ask the question that seems to be looming, insisting on being asked, under the circumstances: did my morning need the internet? Is my life better with it? Am I really more connected now, less lonely, better informed, closer to people?
But I think the answer is yes.