Grace Independent

It hit me yesterday, as I was out using Wifi and having coffee feeling quite....odd....as I move into my first full week without the Internet in my house, that I have lived with an Internet connection for a really, long time.

I mean...a really long time.

When I was growing up, in the late 70s, we had a computer in the house that could access a mainframe and a smaller, private network. The computer's name was Sam. All computers had names back then, it was a part of how they were recognized on the network. Funny, the computer had the username and password, not the person. But I spent a great deal of my childhood down in the basement talking with Sam.

Then, beginning in the late 80s I always had an Internet connection at home or at work.

So, my kicking the "little people in the box" out of my house is kind of an enormous life change. Far bigger then I first realized.

Mind you. I still have the Internet on my phone and, in all honesty, in a way I am more wired now then when I had the actual broadband connection. How can that be? Easy, the world is slowly switching from accessing the Internet via computers to using mobile devices. In fact, 65% of the world gets on line via their mobile phones. By 2015 it is expected that 90% of the world will only be accessing the net by their cell phones.

So, in a way, I have actually stepped forward with technology rather then gotten rid of it. But it is very, very strange. It is a huge change not to have the access in a way that I am used to having it for the past oh say 30 some odd years.

I find...at first it was a bit like withdrawing from a drug, then I was physically tense, and now, I am starting to feel a strange kind of centeredness. I go home and it is my home now, my studio.

Not that I have written anything this week. That is not true, this week I have actually written two articles and an opinion piece for the next Street Sights, 25 articles of varying nature for publication on various sites, the blog, grace independent thingbobs and three essays for my various classes plus worked on planning notes for several projects.

But of course, because I have not worked on "the city," I say that I have not written a thing all week.

Funny how that works.

Oh yes, and I have also been picking and poking and the Executioner's Song again, I am still just not happy with the recording or the video work. But I have a feeling that something will break free soon - pardon the pun.

And it is Christmas Eve. Sort of, christmas eve day or how ever that works and I am completely disconnected from the madness and stress that seems to be afflicting others. A part of it stems from the fact that no one I am close to does the tree/present/decoration thing. We do the mass/service thing. We usually do a dinner/brunch thing but this year we have opted for pizza and buffalo wings because things have just been really overwhelming of late and we all just want to sit and relax together. Some poor confused soul told me it was un-Christian to not put up a tree. I was thinking....maybe they are making some esoteric connection to wood? Maybe?

Who knows. All I know is that ever since we gave up the gifts and decorations bit the holiday has become much more of a holiday. Our big thing is getting together to eat because although we all have coffee and food in passing during the rest of the year, there is something enormously wonderful about gathering together to share.

I am rambling. I am also out on call this evening which, in its own way, is its own gift to me. Actually, I have been called out for tonight and tomorrow.

Which means I need a nap. Badly.

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