Can you survive 24 hours without the internet? I’ve tried it and it’s how this went

I was standing on the ridge of the nearby Sandia Mountains AlbuquerqueSurrounded by pinion trees and red-covered pine, listening to the dark-eyed juncos trills. In the beauty of all this winter, my phone cried out. And it rang again. And it beeps lively.

A friend sent me an Instagram link. Uber Eats offered discounted deals. Target had a coupon for cleaning the product. Someone drove with my ring doorbell camera. sufficient! It was time for a challenge. It’s time to embrace quiet days – days without the internet. Can it be done? Do I enjoy it?

I chose Saturday before the Super Bowl. At first, I was tired of the idea. Are there any constant interruptions? Are you sure you have any news? Do you have any emails? That’s good! Next, a more complete scope hit: No Security camera Alerts. There are no traffic updates. There is no remote monitoring of foster parents shenanagans. There is no eastbound streaming. So what I prepared for a day without the internet was a mixture of expectations and anxiety.

My basic rules for the internet

The internet is so intertwined with my life that I had to scrutinise what day it looked like. I remembered the pain of the death of a Rotary phone in my childhood, and how to track my appointments on a wall calendar and plan car trips with paper maps. My experiments are like time travel, and I go back to the old days. So there was an audio call. Everything else was out.

This is what I did the night before at 10:30pm.

T-Mobile Home Internet Gateway has been removed: This has disabled the internet at home, including Alexa devices, TV streaming apps, ring doorbell cameras, and Wyze security cameras. Down got Wi-Fi for computers, thermostats and smart plugs. I gave a temporary goodbye My T-Mobile Home Internet Experience.

Focus mode has been turned on: I have looked into all the apps and added them to the list of focus mode (under the Digital Wellbeing Settings) on Android phones. My concession was voice calls. I was able to make or receive voice calls, but that was within the range that I was allowed to use the phone. There are no text messages.

Experiment Day without Internet

My non-internet day started well. There is a non-internet connection Alarm clockSo I woke up on time. Instead of answering the text and scrolling through political news, Facebook events, and Albuquerki Sub Reddit, I read Louise Penny’s Mystery along with Morning Coffee. It was quiet and blissful. My daily digital care has been lifted.

It would have been easy to stay home and read all day, but we need to work with the world to truly understand the meaning of days without the internet. My husband and I have been committed to exploring real estate sales. I created a list of addresses the day before. That morning we got a map of Albuquerque from the 2002 outdated road Atlas. With silent phone calls and optimism, we headed down the road.

There is no Google Maps

My husband drove, I sailed, made small prints stand out, paging through street indexes, traced the grid on the map. The first two sales went well. The third was more challenging, located outside the city in a place not covered by my map. The first real obstacle on Internet Day came into the form of construction-related traffic jams on the I-40. Without traffic alerts, I escaped the highway and found another way on old route 66.

Next came was the wrong turn to the neighbourhood, some fruitless wanderings, and finally the solution. We called people selling real estate. Praise to the US yesterday for writing down contact information. The real estate sales person offered to text us the map. Instead, there was an old-fashioned oral orientation.

That worked. Between the instructions and some neon green signs, we found sales in a remote semi-rural community. I won a vintage glass deviled egg plate for a few dollars. We wandered around nearby mountain towns, enjoyed the views and left the interstate to return home.

A night without streaming

I’m not a complete streaming addict. I usually run one or two subscriptions at a time. Now it’s Prime and Max. I have a discount agreement with Max, so I burn what I’m interested in before cancelling when the contract goes out in June. Without streaming, we turned to antennas, the classic way to access entertainment.

My mind hovered in a flashback state of childhood, as I scrolled through channels and skipped paid programming, cop shows and shopping networks. “This sucks,” I thought. Could not check the online TV guide. I repeatedly tap the remote.

When Bruce Springsteen sang “57 Channel and Nothin ‘on,” we were on an old western movie channel where gun device Willie Nelson walked around town with a painful expression on his face I saw it. Mostly we worked on jigsaw puzzles.

The Willie Nelson movie turned into a Kenny Rogers movie, and I got bail early to play with the cat and read and sleep. This was not a normal night for me, but it was a completely lovely way to finish the day without the internet.

aftermath

The biggest part of not having the internet that day was the suspension of Micro Interdulad – all the little things that steal attention: neighborhood alerts, sales, emails that need to be removed. I enjoyed being quiet so much that I didn’t put the T-Mobile Home Internet Gateway back until Sunday morning, 36 hours after the experiment began.

As much as I was worried about the darkening security cameras in the era Pouch Pirates And a small theft, that wasn’t a problem for the whole day. But I don’t want to go forever without them. Instead, reset the ring camera motion detection to reduce random alerts from car and dog pedestrians. I followed these Tips for reducing annoying smart home camera alerts.

What I most noticed was how often I reached for my phone for frivolous reasons to feed the strange little questions that pop into my mind throughout the day. How can I cleanly open the funky tab closure of a Costco baggage bag? Does Whole Foods sell King Cake? Who played the song Rainbow in the dark? It worked even without an answer.

Certainly, I made hash from a bagel bag, but that’s fine. Instead of punching Google queries on my phone, I figured things out. I accepted my opinion. I chatted with my husband New Mexico Road trip. I lived a short life without digital crutches.

Just say no to notifications

I have some lessons from my unattended day with me. I’ve become even more ruthless about notifications. Sorry, Uber is eating neighborhood alerts, targeting, and ringing – you’re out. Weather, text messages and calendar alerts can stay.

I’m working to get better at reaching my phone for every little thing. Now that you have unlocked the full power mode in focus mode, you can use it. I can have a quiet moment on the mountain where only the alert is the squirrel calling from the trees.

I have developed nostalgia for a day without the internet already. It’s a rosy memory of a fun time listening to the Classic Rock Station on the radio, and I don’t know if I’ll find a destination.

The internet may have smoothed out our paths and made our day more efficient. But I didn’t miss anything. I’ve navigated. We entertained ourselves. The world wasn’t over because I didn’t respond to my email on Saturday. I also forgot to do ward.

I still love so much that the internet can do for me. You don’t have to sit on your shoulder and whisper endlessly to your ears with every moment of awakening.

So here is my heartfelt recommendation. Sometimes it shuts down. One day. A few hours. Get the map. I’m going for a drive. Watch old movies with your antenna. There’s still the internet tomorrow.