Life without technology

I've been looking for ways to not get so distracted when I'm trying to write. Usually it's some random silliness on the Internet that does it. There's software that can help block the Internet for however long you want, but literally the day I decided against getting it my ISP had a meltdown. The Internet, phone, and cable went dead for half a day.

How was I going to do research? How was I going to buy movie tickets? What was going to distract me while I wrote? I should have been used to this. Electricity was a luxury when I was a kid. If I had to go six weeks without electricity, that was it. There was no use complaining about it. After I reminded myself of this and calmed down, I realized that I had not only written more, but I ended up having a conversation with my mother. We talk all the time, but there's usually background noise involved - clicking on the keyboard or whatever is on TV. Anyway, we mostly talked about our memories. She talked about growing up in Jamaica. I remembered our first house in Nigeria with its ridiculously tiny kitchen. Somehow she remembered the fancy dishes she kept in that kitchen. We only ate off those white plates on Christmas Day and nobody else ever saw them. It was strange how we remembered things from forty or twenty years ago, but yesterday is murky. Today is even murkier.

The point is, I shouldn't wait for my ISP to crash to do all these things. I can't shut off the Internet every day, but I choose to stay off for one day a month, or one day a week. That way I can write or connect with my friends and family.

What do you do to avoid getting distracted?

Photos courtesy SXC and SXC