Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Going Off The Grid

In the days before our trip to Corpus Christi, I decided that under no circumstances did I want to be checking my e-mail constantly during my vacation. I was starting to get annoyed with how much time I spend online doing pointless things, and I thought vacation was a perfect time to hit the proverbial reset button and go cold-turkey on my Internet usage.

So I went a week without the Internet. And it was quite a feat since we were only out of town for four days, so I had to be good while I was at home too.

I was amazed at how much free time I had once I stopped checking my usual websites — social media and Google Reader especially. I was surprised to find that I really didn't miss Pinterest or Facebook, and even once I got back home I wasn't super keen on catching up on the things I might have "missed."

What?! You can't be serious!

On the other hand, I'm accustomed to looking things up on my iPhone when I need to, and as we were out of town I constantly wanted to look online for restaurant recommendations and whether or not jellyfish can sting you if they're dead ... but I limited myself to only using apps I already had.

It was nice to disconnect for a little while, but it was difficult! I'm glad to be back online, though I want to focus more on spending time doing things I enjoy both online and off instead of browsing mindlessly to kill time.

Have you ever taken a break from the Internet? What would be hardest for you to go without?

3 comments

  1. We sort of took a break during our honeymoon. We turned off our phones, but did use the hotel computers to check out our email (let the family know that we made it ok) which then let us know that our wedding pictures were uploading. So we would let ourselves go on for a couple of minutes before dinner to look at the pictures.

    It wasn't completely off the grid but I really enjoyed not checking all of my normal daily sites. I need to try that again.

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  2. And now that I think about it, we did go off the grid completely during our cruise because we're cheap and weren't going to pay for the internet. That week was a blast!!

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    1. Haha, I did that too on our honeymoon - just didn't want to pay! However, every time we were in "national waters" I was trying to check my e-mail!

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