Column: What happens when the Internet goes kaput?

I recently wrote a column about all the things that were breaking down in my house, including the washing machine, the lawn mower and the Internet connection.

The worst, by far, for me, was the latter. It was brutal.

But it was also a good learning experience.

I am online frequently. I’ll read my personal e-mail several times a day, my work e-mail more frequently. Although I often loathe Facebook, I do feel the need to log in at least twice during the day.

As a writer, I am constantly using the Internet to check facts, the sources of quotes, and my spelling. I’m taking two online graduate-level courses. Plus, I recently started a Facebook page for the school libraries I supervise. I like to keep it up to date.

All these activities suddenly became much harder to do.

Our problems began when our Internet access slowed down considerably. A FairPoint repairman was sent out and he tweaked a few things. Our loading speeds improved. Then our landline got staticky. Then everything went dead.

GWI scheduled a technician to come to our house. Labor Day weekend intervened. Our local libraries were closed. Thank goodness for the bookstore.

The technician finally arrived the following Wednesday. He found some things to repair, and replaced our old modem with a snazzy new one. He revived the landline. But wait—why didn’t the Internet fire up? Well, FairPoint had apparently blocked us because our line wasn’t an up-to-standards data line. A new line had to be installed.

Needless to say, this took another week.

We hobbled by using my iPhone as a “hot spot.” This gave me enough bandwidth to send in my assignments and for Paul, my husband, and I to briefly check our e-mail. But I had to go to the Wi-Fi-equipped library to watch a set of videos for one course. (I used earbuds.) Portable hot spots eat up data like an ogre gobbles little children.

All this was happening during the first couple of weeks of school, which meant I had a lot to do. Normally, I might have been able to get an assignment for my grad courses done during my lunch break. But I was working right through them.

For some reason, I couldn’t download pictures from my iPhone. It was like they were stuck in midstream. This really hampered my ability to update the library Facebook page. Even plugging the phone directly into my laptop didn’t work. I finally e-mailed the photos to myself.

I couldn’t catch a break.

Paul writes several blogs, so he headed off to the library every morning to post his material. Our local laundromat has Wi-Fi, so he was able to get in some online time while waiting for the spin cycle. Isn’t that ironic?

My lowest moment came on a sunny Sunday afternoon when I needed to get a document off the school server. Although I was using my school-issued laptop, the firewall would not let me access the server through a hot spot. I’m not sure why, as the hot spot was protected by a password, but there was no one available for me to argue with at that point.

The only solution I could see was to go up to school to access Wi-Fi from my car. Luckily, we only live a mile away. I got there only to find that there was some kind of event going on and people were streaming in and out of the building. The signal was too weak in the car, so I had to sit on a bench in front of the school. I felt a bit foolish, as well as a bit guilty, like I was a hacker, or an Edward Snowden type.

I couldn’t help thinking, “Has it really come to this?”

Amidst all my angst, however, I realized something interesting. I often waste a lot of time meandering around on the Internet. Sometimes I’ll play idly on my phone. Other times I’ll be researching something legitimate, and then suddenly fly off on a tangent. This sort of behavior ceased once my Wi-Fi access was limited. If I needed to check a fact, I quickly located the information and then signed off.

If only I could be so conscientious now that I can once again spend as much time online as I want. When our connections were finally fixed, Paul and I fell upon our computers in a frenzy of correspondence, postings, uploadings and downloadings.

Still, we know that we can, and should, take time away from the Internet. We can live without it if we have to. We have faced the abyss and—just barely—survived.