Here I sit. Typing on my computer. The pastel light floods the room. I listen to Billie Holiday. There is no noise. No traffic, no people, just crows and hawk.
I can not flip over to my web browser and google something.
I can not see if I if I got a text message or publish an instagram. I can not receive a phone call.
I can focus.
I love the internet. Too much so, that I can not get anything done. This gals loves to google things that her forever virgo analytical mind conjures up.
I have lived off the gridish before and this time I am almost to month 6 after a year of total connection being a Web Design student in Chicago last year.
Finally at month 6. I can go into an area with a signal and not have the impulse to check my iPhone. I finally don’t care anymore. It no longer quells my OCD.
Today I took the wolves on a 2 hour hike on the Bolinas Ridge Trail, a trail that happens to be one of the few places in West Marin that gets all bars of service. And I hardly touched the phone. I so enjoyed the sun on my skin and watching the pure bliss the wolves were in being off leash, leaping and bounding through the pastured lands.
I have lived in remote Alaska and rural France where internet was limited and have long wanted my own off the grid bed and breakfast.
And now, when I go to San Francisco, I see the yearning for disconnect. Trendy coffee shops with no internet are en vogue, Ethan just invited me to an event at a bar that did not allow mobile technology, just games and typewriters, and just about every San Franciscan wants to create off the grid refuge.
I just met a man last night who wants to create a place that doesn’t even have electricity.
I live in close harmony with nature. Here in the woods, it’s dark and there is no TV or internet. Even if you are a night owl, you will still go to bed by 10-11.
I feel amazing. I sleep seven, restful hours here in the woods as opposed to the nine I need in the city. I wake with the sun. I feel a happiness that I never knew existed. Taking the stressors of traffic, commuting, technology, sitting still, machines beeping at me has made me a better, happy human being. I have never been so grounded and extroverted in my life.
I do wish, I could give this gift to everyone. So, I am networking. I want to find an investor to create more refuge so we all can heal. (Oh, that sounds sooo California.)
What do you think? Could you go without the internet? What would life be like without it? What would you do?