I saw Bradley Cooper the other day! And by “saw” I mean I paid money to watch him perform in “The Elephant Man.” He was absolutely brilliant! If his name wasn’t plastered everywhere, I probably would not have known it was him. That is mostly due to his acting chops, but also because I was seated in the very back row of the very highest balcony. Boy, have I been spoiled by front row day seats. I’m not sure if it was the show itself or my seat, but I just couldn’t get into the play. I kept shifting positions trying to look around the guy in front of me’s giant head, and I kept getting annoyed by the littlest of things, like the girl next to me who kept digging in her bag constantly. I dread the queuing aspect of day seats, but you really can’t beat the immersive experience of being in the front row.
It’s officially summer now, which means it’s starting to get hot in London. Not hot for the average person, but hot for me (though I fear next week it will get properly hot — I’m seeing 90F/32C in the forecast! Dear god let that please change before Wednesday!) So I decided to walk home from the show instead of sit on a hot and stuffy bus or Tube (I also did it for the Fitbit steps, naturally). I finally made it back, ready to finish up the work I put off in favor of seeing Bradley Cooper from a far distance, but my email wasn’t loading. No website was loading. So I attempted the usual fix — unplugging and restarting the router — but it didn’t work. The normally white smiley Internet icon was orange.
I sent Stephen this photo:
And then I called Sky. After being on hold for ages, I was eventually told there must be an outage and the engineers were working on it, but it could take up to 5 days to fix.
5 days. No internet for 5 days.
Basically the only time I am not using the internet is when I am sleeping or showering. Even when I run or cook I stream music or podcasts. If I’m not working, I’m watching Netflix or surfing Facebook and other sites. I cannot just not have internet. I started planning how I could handle the next 5 days, going to the library or Starbucks to work, and then using my unlimited phone data while at home. I thought we might have to head out Californee way in search of some internet.
After resetting the router again in vain, I realized I had to relax. I was still on track to get my required work done by Friday, and everything else could wait until the next day. In a weird way, a sense of relief came over me. It was like being on an airplane. I’m almost glad airplanes don’t have [free] WiFi, because then I’d feel obligated to be productive. The only good part about a long flight is having that guilt-free time away from work and distractions. One of the pros of working from home is not having set hours, but it’s also a con in that I’m never really done working for the day. But that day, I was. I wish I could say I used my internet-less time wisely and wrote a story or read an actual book, but in reality I was glued to my phone. Still, my mind wasn’t thinking about all the things I had to write or edit, I could fully enjoy Doug the pug’s Instagram.
And then when I woke up the next day the orange light was back to white. The Internet Fairy (or Sky engineer) had come! No need to head to Starbucks or out Californee way. I never want to live without the internet, but I guess occasionally it’s good to know that I can (…for a night).
Reneedezvous 