Last Thursday was humbling…Friday was frustrating…Saturday was maddening…Sunday just plain p—ed me off….And yesterday was oh so much better.  What on earth could so affect my mood and outlook on life?  It’s truly embarrassing but – our internet was down.  4 days of no wireless or wired in our flat…no reason given, it just went bye-bye.  There WAS life before wifi, right?  I KNOW there was – I was there. But the way both Andrew and I make our living, and stay connected to family and friends currently – and that will be true for the foreseeable future – is via the internet.  And when it takes a holiday,  it is not at all pleasant.  Let’s break this down:

Andrew runs PatientPower,  and the site is populated  by content that Andrew almost wholly moderates through the magic of webcasting. You need internet connection to put the doctors, the patients, and Andrew together in dialogue in a cost-effective way (yay for Skype) and then post that discussion on line.  No way to create content, no way to post it, no business.

I do most of my consulting and other project work “virtually”.  I have clients in the US and I talk to them via Skype, send files via email, etc.  No internet, no clients, no business.

I should mention that we both also depend on working with virtual teams/partners – no internet makes for impossibly expensive collaboration. Grrrrrrr.

Not a pretty picture.

I realized (duh) that if the Internet went away tomorrow, so would Amazon.  Really.  There are no AMAZON stores to walk into (that I know if).  Craig’s List would be listless. Angie’s List would have all sorts of angst.  And think of all those ebook readers who would have to head back to the library and learn the dreaded Dewey Decimal system (if you don’t know what that is you are TOO YOUNG).  Makes the restaurant business mighty appealing…

I digress. 

The upshot of all this was a daily desperate search for free wifi…in coffee houses, bars, hotel lobbies, parks, and finally – a UPS Store.  Yes, here is a photo of yours truly sitting in an alley-like street (actually right downstairs from our current flat), mooching wifi from the UPS store, on a Skype call, at 11pm.  I wish I’d had a camera hidden because the looks I got were classic.

What made me the most uncomfortable of all is the visceral anxiety I felt being disconnected.  I definitely think there is a market for a counseling specialty in wifi withdrawal.  Really.

The final act here?  We got our connectivity back Monday. And why was it broken?  The internet provider sent a guy out to upgrade a neighbor’s internet – in our building, and he toasted everyone else’s service in the process…on Thursday…no show Friday…and he doesn’t work weekends!!!   This is soooooo…. Spanish. But as they say: “Es normale!”

Ya gotta laugh.

Hasta pronto!