Vacationing

This week I did something I haven't done in half a dozen years. I stayed offline and off my computer for over three days.

I'm vacationing in Florida for these two weeks, but that normally doesn't keep me off the internet. Being deaf so much of my communication happens online, and being chronically ill means that the community I'm a part of must necessarily be one I can interact with regularly without leaving my bed, thus again, online.

This means, however, that I always take my social life and many other responsibilities with me when I go on 'vacation.' The night before I was leaving I got an email bomb (one of the most horrid ways of communication) and being on top of a lot of online drama over the past four months, I was far more than ready for an internet fast. Plus technical difficulities make it tricky to get online at will, and so it's quite easy to instead pick up a book or go to the pool or do a bit of drawing instead.

I expected to miss it, but for the first time in years I found myself completely content to live completely offline. I didn't miss facebook, or e-mail (although I did feel a bit guilty about not getting up new posts for you). I could trust my mods to let me know if something truly big needed my attention on the forum, and my business partner and RP group were aware that I was going through hard stuff.

And you know what? It was really restful. I've been able to zone out and think and live in the moment and think... (wait, I already said that...)...

I couldn't live this way forever. It would be irresponsible, and I frankly wouldn't want to. The internet has been overall one of the great blessings of the electronic age and my biggest asset in managing being both deaf and chronically ill.

However, it is good to vacation from all worldly things, to change one's pace, to get a new perspective, and to rest.

So even if the cause was a bad one, the result is good.