I spent three days without functional WiFi!

I spent three days without functional WiFi!

While most people of my generation would probably develop an aneurism at the thought of spending 72 long hours without the internet, I found it rather liberating. I don't consider myself to be entirely immune to the effects of internet addiction, but I'm also not one of those people that can't hold a conversation any more because they are too busy commenting on a photo of a dog posted by an old neighbour's gardener.

The thing about the internet is that, it's impossible to get bored when you have access to an unlimited amount of media, and while nobody truly likes to get bored, I think it is somewhat underrated. By constantly being plugged in, aren't we denying ourselves one of the most powerful human desires? I've never thought of myself as Picasso, but there is a gaping void between being a creative genius and an introvert to inspiration. Those three days gave me just enough of a window, without any major distractions, to actually become bored for the first time in a good long while, and that is partly my inspiration for starting this blog.

I think boredom opens us up to an ability we rarely choose to access, probably because it means confronting the parts of ourselves that we don't like to admit exist. When we are bored we see ourselves in a whole new light, and I think people are now missing out.

I used to get bored a lot as a child. What with having two older brothers who were always occupied with big boys activities, and a parenting team working very hard most days to keep bread on the table, I found myself at a loss more often than I care to remember. Now don't get me wrong, I have very fond memories of my childhood. I was lucky enough to have several friends of a similar age living within close proximity to me, and my parents and brothers spared time for me whenever they could. Let me stress, I was far from hard done by! But there were definitely a lot of times when I was completely lost for something to do; a lot of rainy days. It was at these times that I would have to turn  to one of my hobbies, and believe me, I had a lot as a child: fumbling around on the piano, occasionally sketching, building a colossal structure out of wooden blocks and smashing down again (a personal favourite). The point is, when those clouds opened and the rains fell, I was forced to make a decision, and to really search inside myself for a desire to do something. I know that people still make decisions based on what they want to do, but it's different now, because there's too much on offer for people to ever have to really search themselves the way I did.

Now this might be ok for the young adults like myself who didn't grow up surrounded by interconnected technology, we just missed it by a hair, but I see too many children now glued to an iPad for hours on end. Sure, I had a gameboy, and my word did I kill some hours on that thing, but it wasn't endless entertainment, every game was finite. I fear now for the children growing up whose parents are too busy to teach them to entertain themselves, and simply thrust a tablet into their hands. But here's the upside, it's never too late to learn.

I have been accustomed to the endless media vault of the internet for a long time now, and it was a huge shock to my system to find myself without it. I had become so utterly absorbed that I had honestly forgotten how to reach deep inside myself to find inspiration. In the end though, I figured it out again, and that gives me the hope that those tablet-obsessed little horrors we see around in coffee shops and on trains and buses, will one day learn that ability too, once we burn google to the ground, that is...