24 hours without internet: my release and opening experience

Would you consider going a day without the internet on the eve of Super Bowl? I did it and I will tell you why. Even better, let me draw the picture for you.

I was standing on the ridge in the Sandia mountains near Albukerke, New MexicoSurrounded by pinion trees and pine pines, listening to the trail of dark -eyed junkos that crashes through the submarine. Against the backdrop of all this winter beauty, my phone went wrong. And he went wrong again. And it was buzzing and throwing away.

A friend sent a connection to Instagram. Uber Eats offered a discount deal. Target had a product cleaning coupon. Someone is driving from the camera of my ringing bell. Enough! It was a challenge time. It was time to hug a day of silence – a day without the internet. Can I do it? Would I like it?

I chose Saturday before the Super Bowl. At first, I was dizzy with the idea. No constant interruptions? No news? No emails? Sounds great! After that, a more speedy range of range: no Security camera Alerts. No traffic updates. There is no remote monitoring of the head of the foster cat. No streaming to the east and down. So it was with a mixture of expectation and trembling I prepared for a day without the Internet.

My basic rules without internet

The internet is so tangled in my life that I had to look at what it would look like even a day without the Internet. I thought about my childhood, the death of rotary phones and how my parents would track meetings in the calendars on the wall and plan for travel with paper cards. My experiment would be like a time trip, returning to old days. So voice calls were inside. Everything else was out.

Here’s what I did at 10:30 pm the night before.

Turn off the T-Mobile Home internet gateway: This deactivates my home internet, including Alexa devices, television streaming applications, the ring bell camera and my Wyze security cameras. Down went Wi-Fi for my computers, thermostat and intelligent plugs. I removed a temporary goodbye to My experience in home internet T-MobileS

Focus mode included: I reviewed all my apps and added them to the focus mode of my Android phone (found in the digital well -being settings list). My concession was voice calls. I could make or receive voice calls, but that was the degree of my phone being used. No text messages.

An Internet Experiment Day

My day without the Internet started well. I have an internet connected alarm clockSo I got up on time. Instead of responding to texts and scrolling into political news, Facebook events and Subreddit Albuquerque, I read a Louise Penny mystery with my morning coffee. It was quiet and blissful. My daily digital care was canceled.

It would be easy to just stay home and read a book all day, but I had to deal with the world to realize the meaning of a day without the Internet. My husband and I have committed to investigating real estate sales. We made a list of addresses the previous day. That morning, we took a map of Albukerke from an outdated 2002 Atlas road. With silent phones and a sense of optimism, we went down the road.

Missing my Google Maps

My husband was driving and I was moving, blinking to the tiny imprint, running through the street index and tracking the network on the map. The first two sales went well. The third was a sooner challenge, located outside the city in a place not covered by my map. The first true obstacle from the day of the Internet appeared in the form of a traffic jam, related to the construction of the I-40. Without trafficking signals, we escaped the highway and found an alternative way in an old 66 way.

Then it was a turn in the wrong neighborhood, some fruitless wandering, and then, finally, a solution. We called the people for sale of real estate. Kudos to yesterday’s US to record contact information. The property sales person offered us a card that we refused. Instead, we received some old -fashioned verbal instructions.

Works. Between the instructions and several neon-green signs, we found the sale in a remote, semi-senior community. I put a vintage glass virgin with an egg plate for a few dollars. We wandered through the nearby mountain cities, revealed ourselves in the landscape and stayed away from the interstate, as they were home.

No -stream night

I am not totally streaming drug addictS I usually have one or two subscriptions that go at once. Currently this is Prime and maxS I am on a discount offer with max, so I burn what interests me before canceling when the deal expires in June. Without streaming, we turned to the classic method of access to entertainment: antenna.

My mind was in a state of childhood retrospective as I scrolled through channels, skipping paid programming, COP shows and shopping networks. “It’s nasty,” I thought. I could not check the online television management; I just repeatedly hit the remote.

As Bruce Springstein sang “57 channels and nothing on”, we found ourselves on an old Western movie channel, watching arms Willie Nelson walking around the city with a sick face. Most of all, we worked on a puzzle.

Willie Nelson’s movie became a movie by Kenny Rogers, and I gave up early to play with the cat, read and go to bed, my phone is nothing more than a paper stored in the nightstand. It was not a regular night for me, but it was a completely great way to end a day without the Internet.

The consequences of my day without internet

The best part of not having the internet for the day was the break for micro-interviews-all small things that steal attention: signals for a neighborhood, sales of stores and emails that need to be deleted. I liked the silence so much that I did not return the T-Mobile Home internet gate until Sunday morning, 36 hours after the experiment began.

As much as I was worried about my security cameras, darkening in the era of pirates And a small theft, it was not a problem for a day. I wouldn’t want to go forever without them. Instead, I reset the detection of my motion camera to reduce random signals from cars and dog walkers. I followed them Tips to reduce annoying signals for intelligent home cameraS

What I noticed the most was how often I reached for my phone for frivolous reasons to feed the strange little questions that appear in my head throughout the day. How do I open the clean Funky closing on the Bagel Costco bag? Does the whole food sell the cake with a king? Who performed the song Rainbow in the dark? I did it well without answers.

Of course, I made a hash from the bag with a gavrek, but that’s good. Instead of punching on Google requests on my phone, I understood things. I hugged the views. I talked to my husband about New Mexico Travel travel. I lived life, however briefly, without digital crutch.

My last thought: just say no to the notifications

I bring with me some lessons from my day without the Internet. I became more uninhabited in terms of notifications. Unfortunately, Uber eats, targeted and ringing signals for the neighborhood – you are out. Time, text messages and calendar alerts may remain.

I work on being better to reach for my phone for every little thing. Now that I have unlocked the full power of the focus mode, I can put it into operation. I can have my quiet moments at the top of a mountain, where the only signals are squirrels who call from the trees.

I have already developed a sense of nostalgia for my day without the internet. This is a pink memory of fun times in the car, listening to the classic rock station on the radio, not knowing if we will find our destination without worrying that it even matters.

The Internet could smooth out our path and make our day more efficient. But I didn’t miss anything. We navigated. We had fun. The world was not over because I didn’t answer on Saturday. I even forgot to do Wordle.

I still love a lot of what the Internet can do for me. I just don’t have to sit on my shoulder every awake moment, whispering endlessly in my ear.

So, here’s my heart recommendation. Turn it off sometimes. For a day. For a few hours. Get a card. Go to driving. Watch an old antenna movie. The Internet will still be there tomorrow.