This morning, I’m without internet for perhaps the first time since being housebound and I’m embarrassingly out-of-sorts. I’m online doing something pretty much all day. Whether it’s reading articles, talking with people on WhatsApp, ordering things I need, paying bills, connecting with the outside world on Facebook, streaming shows to our TV, podcasts, music– it all requires an internet connection. My calendar is online, my to-do lists are online, my newspapers are online, I have commitments with a neighbourhood group and we communicate solely via FB Messenger, Skype is down and I don’t have international calling on my phone… It even took me a while to figure out how to type this because I don’t have a laptop with Word and I usually just open an email to write blog posts.

I realise this is a privileged problem–I’m not complaining about the internet being down, I’m complaining about how dependent on it I have become, how empty my daily routine is without the World Wide Web. But empty is an ugly word–how open and full of possibilities my day is without my crutch. And just how incredibly grateful I am for that crutch. If I were too sick to look at a screen or be near wi-fi, or if I had gotten sick years before I did, this would have been a far more harrowing and isolated experience. The internet has told me what doctors couldn’t, my symptoms are less scary and things are put in perspective, I’ve made wonderful new friends, stayed connected with some old friends and traveled the world with them through photos online. But today I might do exactly what I longed to do when I was a workaholic — laze at home and read a book. Pity I already feel antsy and am losing focus one page in. My brain needs some serious retraining.

Title Credit (when I was trying to decide what to call this short post, I realised it would be an excellent opportunity to share Ren’s new song, featuring his girlfriend. He is someone I know online who suffers with M.E. and Lyme disease. He is also an incredible musician. This song brought tears to my eyes (of course, it’s not about the silly interent, it is about the much more important crutches in our lives–our loved ones).)