Disconnected

A storm came through this morning and knocked out our cable service for most of the day. It cut me off from my Sunday morning political programs on tv, which was annoying, and from the internet, which was surprisingly disconcerting.

It seemed like everything I planned to do, I couldn't. No email, Facebook or Twitter. No online bill-paying. No blogging or catching up on blogs I follow. No Weather Channel online or on the iPhone (no wireless either) to check out the temperature.

It took forever to unearth the phone book to find the number to call Time Warner to report the outage. I've come to depend on Google to find phone numbers, and don't use the old phone book much any more.

I was cut off from my connections.

So, I went to the gym and the grocery store. Got the political commentary I was missing on tv from the newspaper's opinion page instead. Took the dog for a walk. Actually went through some of the stuff I haul to and from the office to read "sometime." With other distractions unavailable, today became a pretty good "sometime."

Tonight, with both the cable and my world order restored, I'm thinking about what I've learned from today's moments of disconnection.

Not that long ago, I didn't even know what the internet was. Now I depend on it, and the access it brings to people, information and ideas. What new capabilities will I depend on, or even take for granted, 10 or 20 years hence (if I'm still alive by then), that I don't even know I'm missing today? The possibilities are exciting, and I am eager to learn the answer.

At the same time, it's not such a bad thing to be sent back to the basics now and again -- disconnected from some of my expectations, but reconnected to the real world.