A Little Break From Technology

It's been a rough few days over here. There was a huge AT&T phone outage in our area and we lost our internet service Tuesday night. You may be thinking that this is really no big deal, but when you come to rely on something every day, it's hard to be without. This is especially true in my line of work. I work from home and spend about 75% of my day online for work. I've also been finishing up developing two websites and updating another so it was pretty much impossible for me to get anything done. I know I should have embraced this opportunity and taken some 'me' time to relax, but the stress of not having the internet made that very difficult.

What was a girl to do? Well, this girl had to improvise. Wednesday was spent in meetings and running around so it was an off-site work day. Yesterday, I tried that whole 'I can't work so I might as well take a vacation day' thing. I spent a lot of time hanging out with my son and I'm glad I did. I want to have that quality time before he grows up and wants nothing to do with me. There were moments of frustration and anxiety over not being able to meet deadlines, but I survived and had a pretty good day. We went to the park, played with trains, put together a puzzle, and went to visit his aunt and my parents. Today was a little different though. I couldn't go another day without getting some work done so I had to relocate to another location that did have internet. Back to the folks it was. Thank goodness they live nearby so I could mooch off their network! By the time I got home around 5, our internet was up and running again. I was able to finish up some things tonight and I think I'll be able to breathe and relax over the weekend now.

This whole outage fiasco got me thinking. I'm going to try to limit my time in front of and around technology. It will be hard because of work, but my son is only 2 and a half so I want to try to spend as much time with him as I can. When he's not with a sitter, I'll save most of my work and blogging for after he goes to bed. And I'll also try to take a night off here and there to spend some time with my husband. Yes, that might mean a movie night sometimes, but at least we'll be together without computers in front of our faces. And maybe we'll even whip out monopoly ever once in awhile. I think it's time to realize that life is too short to rely so much on the laptops and TVs of the world.