Off the grid, in the grid

In a situation that seems fitting almost nowhere but on a sitcom, for the past week, I have been so disconnected from the network that a world populated by people perpetually in my circumstances would put everyone from online marketers to the bigger-than-life tech gurus like Apple out of business forever. Two weeks ago, I lost my 24/7 plug to constant and easy human connection in an accident involving my phone and some water. I took my Facebook habit—turned down a notch without the immediate notification of its direct messages—to my laptop, and sacrificed the automaticity of texting to a clumsy Wi-Fi app that made me cringe to imagine ever replying. It had been the first time in a while my life had been Snapchat-free. Moment to moment, I was also markedly free of the incessant group banter propagated by the like of GroupMe. As my laptop and outdated iPad became the intermediaries between my social interactions with the world, I felt my productivity soar. With my thumb no longer millimeters and micro-movements away from electronic portals to windows of wasted time, my social media use turned deliberate; I became conscious of my habits and critical of my recent seemingly-continuous, nearly-imperceptible self-indulgence. I felt as perfectly balanced between connectivity and self-autonomy as seems possible today.

But then this past weekend my laptop failed as well. Attempts at resuscitation proved unfruitful, and as the realization that I had temporarily lost heaps of valuable data settled over me, I panicked. I cooled down only after assuring myself that, given time, I could fix it or transfer my data and, at the very least, temporarily use the library’s abundant and much higher quality computers. Nonetheless, with its severely limited space and software capabilities, my first generation iPad mini couldn’t handle the burden of a 2015 requirement to be connected and always at the ready when I wouldn’t be at the library. I felt I had lost a part of myself.

If that wasn’t bad enough, in another unfortunate turn of events, my iPad lost functionality. And that’s when the nightmare really began. I was so disconnected, so utterly lacking any working portable electronic devices, that when I wanted to take a nap, I had to ask a hallmate to please wake me up in 30 minutes because I couldn’t set an alarm of my own. In short, aside from class and sleeping, I couldn’t exist but in front of a library computer. Of course, this wasn’t a burden in and of itself because I had so much work I had to make up in dealing with the aftermath of my un-backed-up broken laptop that I’d be in front of a computer for the rest of the week anyway. But the restrictions of a computer to resume the duties of connectivity were blaringly clear.

At any rate, I made it to the library, settled on a computer and got to work. Admittedly, a computer still does a lot—even the “meager” connection with the outside world it provides is a lot. But the entire dynamics of social media interaction fundamentally change on a desktop, especially one that is not your own. You can’t help but feel, even inches from the Internet, unconnected. For one thing, certain social media platforms don’t function on desktops and are totally wiped of the realm of possibilities (especially if you have built a habit around them, you can’t help but feel some existential loss). Secondly, the unchanging personal environment that is created around the usage of your specific desktop serves to ingrain the habitual use of some social media platform. For instance, to the extent that I use Facebook more on my own desktop, I make it easier to use Facebook on my own desktop specifically to return to it unthinkingly, reflexively. As long as some significant difference exists between the environment of your own desktop and that of another (I own a PC, but the library uses Macs), the same habits are weakly transferable—a Facebook different than the one you know is enough to make it feel less like Facebook.

That week’s work required significant synthesis, which as we know is more mentally taxing than analytical work or simply reading. In the throes of creating a continuously consistent line of thought and following it to completion despite its confounding complexity, if you’re like most people, you’re likely to get tired soon enough. If you’re using the Internet as this happens and you’re like me, moments of greater confusion give way to the comparatively comforting and languid use of social media. If you’re really like me, as you anticipate a particularly scary thought coming over the horizon looking to be nurtured, you’ll avoid having to commit to the thought before it ever comes by pre-emptively switching over to social media. In other words, this is procrastination (and the closely-associated avoidance of sacrificing the perfection of a thought) as classic as it comes. And for some reason—partially that I had not acclimated to social media on this desktop and this working environment and obviously because I had only limited access to the various social media platforms—despite this week’s work, I stayed on track, undistracted. Magical, truly.

As the psychological and cognitive data would suggest, we learn most, we grow most, when something—a concept supposedly—is just beyond our reach, enough so that we have to strain our mental faculties to apprehend it. Anything less is using our abilities to only-partially fulfilling potential; anything more causes confusion and frustration without reward. In the week that social media seemingly dropped off the face of the earth for me, my thoughts felt particularly high resolution. I stuck with my thoughts through mental thicket, and I can honestly say I was more than rewarded for what I lost in social media exposure. I worked out the nuances and thus the solutions of problems and thoughts that had put me off for some time. I developed interests I only slightly knew I had. Inevitably I’ll have to fix my devices. But this time, I’m going back aware of what I sacrifice in living always under the thumb of connectivity, ready still to grow.

Antoniu Chirnoaga is a Trinity sophomore. His column runs on alternate Fridays.