Disconnected

I’ve been in southwest Florida for the past nine days, seeing my parents and in-laws and helping my mother who recently had rotator cuff surgery. At eighty, she’s doing pretty darn well. I’m blessed to still have my parents and my wife’s parents still living, all in their eighties. I just returned today to Seattle. I was pretty busy with family things and doing what I could to make sure good ole’ mom didn’t overdo it.
Although I brought my laptop, I found it hard to be connected online. When you live in technology oriented urban areas such as Seattle, the Bay Area, L.A., Austin and many others you take for granted the ease with which you can access the internet. It’s not the case in places like south Florida where many, if not most, of the residents don’t even have computers. If they do, they aren’t wired to the net. If they are wired to the net, they aren’t using a wireless router, so I couldn’t even borrow (or, is it steal?) a signal from anyone in the condo complexes- no signals to be found. In fact, in certain areas it’s actually hard to get a cell phone signal!
So, I was resigned to finding a Starbucks every other day for an hour…which was all the time I had to break away while my mother was at physical therapy. By the time I ordered my standard double tall non-fat latte, fired up the laptop, and logged into the Starbucks-ATT WIFI link I only had about forty-five minutes left in that hour. All I could do was collect my email from the three sites I use. I typically get over one hundred emails each day. It was a bit frustrating.
Yes, if I had an air card or something similar it would have made a difference. But, I don’t travel enough out of the wired Seattle area to justify the expense. Even Boingo wouldn’t have made a difference as I still would have had to break away and find a spot that I could connect into.
Did I miss the internet? Yes. I missed the opportunity to be connected to others and to search for information (news, videos, blogs, columns/postings, etc.) at random, whenever I felt like it. This is the world we’re in. Is it necessary? I think so. I can’t imagine doing business or building relationships today without the tools we have. Is it death when you can’t connect well for a week or more? No. Just by clearing my emails I was able to stay somewhat current with my network. And with few exceptions, if I hadn’t been able to connect the world would not have come to an end. Maybe my sanity would have come to an end because I would have had to come back to well over one thousand emails!
Now I’m back and ready to blog with a bit more regularity. I enjoy it and I’m finding that a few of you do too! I appreciate your feedback and comments from time to time. I like writing about business and other issues and I try to do it with a common sense approach. I’m rewired and ready to go.

© 2009 Peter E. McDowell
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