Twenty four hours with no internet? No problem. I’m going camping and staying away from the internet would not be a problem was my first thought; however, I changed my mind and wanted to fully challenge myself. I knew it was going to be a difficult challenge because I love the internet. What is there not to love? It provides me information and updates on all the other parts of my life that I love; music, sports, and furthering my knowledge about useless information. Not only does it keep me up to date in my interests and hobbies, but I am also able to communicate with friends through instant messenger. Throughout the years, a lot of my friends have abandoned the instant messengers and they start asking questions about why not just meet with a person for coffee, or at least talk to them on the phone? Why do that when I can have a conversation with a friend on AIM, read about the legacy of Michael Jackson, and watch a Youtube video of a seven year old kid dancing to the newest Black Eyed Peas on the radio all at one time. As you can tell I really do love the internet, but I believe I have the strength to refrain for one day.
D-Day: June 26, 2009
Friday was a day I woke up in Corvallis, but had to head back to Portland so at least a few of the house I had to spend during the day internet less would be spent on the road. However, waking up is one of the first problems that I face. I usually start the day by hitting my computer and checking ESPN.com to read about any sports stories, and this day was especially big because the NBA draft took place the day before. Instead of checking the website, I had to sit in front of the television and wait for an update to scroll on the bottom of the station, or until the broadcasters discussed the topics that I wanted to hear. I wasted a full hour waiting for the commentators to discuss the topic I wanted to hear about in which they only spent about one minute on. This is frustrating because with the internet I am able to a local website that specializes on Oregon Sports instead of a national television station that must discuss various teams around the league.
The rest of the time in Corvallis I spent being productive moving furniture and cleaning out my townhouse before I had to leave to Portland. I was scared that to cope with the boredom of being back in Portland I would revert back to my internet ways, but luckily there was family at my house. We spent the next few hours cleaning the house in Portland and preparing for a barbeque the next day. After my sister in law left my house is when it got a little difficult. It was around 8 PM on a Friday night and I planned on staying in because I had a lot to do the next morning. On any other night I would have spent this time on various websites on the internet furthering my knowledge on music and sports, but on this night I spent it watching TV. I’m not sure why, but for some reason I feel more fulfilled reading about topics on the internet than I do watching them on the news. I feel like my brain is being more productive when it is reading text and not watching images and listening to words. After a few hours of watching television I then hit the sack, and gladly woke up to the latest news and updates from Espn.com
Conclusion
I must say that I had a fairly productive day on Friday, and I am sure that it had a lot to do with not having internet. I’m sure if I had internet I would have taken a lot more breaks in between moving in both Corvallis and Portland, but because I did not have anything to take up my time I was able to stay on task. This is a problem that I deal with in various parts of my life. For instance, throughout this entire blog post I have taken breaks and checked websites or instant messaged friends. I am not that big of an E-Mailer, when I am outside of school so that was not as difficult for me on this day, but from September to June I would need to check them at least four times a day for class updates. Communicating did not influence my day because I am never on my computer just to instant message. It is just a secondary program that that I will use while I am reading other websites.
One part of the day that I did not particularly enjoy was about how much television I watched. Without having internet I felt like I spent a lot of time watching TV either just to kill time or waiting for something that I actually wanted to watch. When I have the internet I can view the topics that I actually want to read about instead of waiting for them to show up during a certain time slot.
