"Don't pull those wires out, we're okay. Nothing's gonna happen. Nothing is going to happen!"

Il dolce far niente. An Italian phrase meaning “the sweetness of doing nothing”. Oh how I wish I could say I learned this high form of art while fasting technologically. But . . . I did not {sad face}.

(I’m not entirely convinced that Americans will ever learn the Importance of Being Idle. Finding Something to Do is in our blood. I’m not bragging. It’s a sickness, really. Besides, I think it’s good to work hard and enjoy the spoils of our work by doing absolutely nothing. I just don’t think I’m one of those people who has this ability. But I’d like to. . . ) (See what happens? Already I digress!)

DAY ONE: The week of the fast started out fine enough. Sunday was D-day – the first day I was internet-less. At first, it was fun. Kind of like a game I was playing with myself. It was liberating. Sort of in the way that a vacation sets you free. Even so, I went to sleep with visions of computer screens dancing in my head. I’m pretty sure I dreamed about the internet that night.

DAY TWO: I got to work on Monday and the impulses started. I wanted to Google. E-mail. Text someone. Look at the poor excuse for news on MSN. Something. Anything. I have never felt more like an addict. I knew I had to identify my triggers. So, I took a yellow notepad and started two columns. The one on the left said “Want to Look Up” and the one on the right said “Did”. Then underneath, I added another column called “Reasons”. I kept this list by me all week and whenever I felt the urge to stop what I was doing and look something up that was not work or school related, I wrote it down under that first column and wrote what I was feeling under Reasons.

Did you know that sometimes I want to look up the stupidest things? Like the French pronunciation of Jeansonne. Like the definition of effusive and what phenylalanine really is. And what a chaturanga yoga pose looks like. I want to find out where I can buy the dryblock sunscreen I bought in some store somewhere years ago that we have not been able to find since (even though we look every time). I want to know whether the cell phone “do not call” list was a scam because I am getting calls from 617 and 342 area codes. (And a little later in the week, I actually cave on this last one and look up the area codes.) (What!? It was an emergency!) (The codes are fakes, btw.)

On another piece of paper, I wrote “Musings” – a record of my thoughts and impressions as I went through the week. I also recorded each day’s summary in my journal. One of my first thoughts was something about how badly I hoped the e-world was missing me. I secretly hoped someone somewhere out there was sending me an e-mail (or a text or a FB message) saying “the e-world is just not the same without you!” (Seriously, how vain is that!?)

Also on that first day, I thought about all the stuff I wrote in my pre-blog days. All those journals. . . And I thought about the notes and calendars and stuff I keep now. And then I thought about what would happen if I had to use pen and paper to record everything for all the rest of my time on earth. Then, I thought “where are they gonna put all that paper when I’m dead”? Then, I thought, “on the other hand, where does all the ‘stuff’ I put on the internet go? Where does that trail end? And who’s to say that someone in some far distant future won’t assume my e-identity and assume all my ‘stuff’ as his or her own and continue where I left off?” My ‘Stuff’ hanging around out there in the internets ad infinitum, with the possibility of being stolen, subsumed, or otherwise perpetuated forever and ever gives me a bit of a panic attack, to tell the truth. Go figure. You’d think the opposite would be true. That I’d be flattered. Or not.

But also, what happens if there is a digital apocalypse? Where does all my stuff go then? And what if I no longer have a digital room to put all my ‘stuff’ in?

. . . to be continued . . .

[Title quote is from "LOST"]