Internet woes...

We've had internet woes recently and I haven't been able to use my PC to get online regularly for several months.  The kicker was most recently being without internet for an entire week (just getting back online yesterday).  And that was after being off the internet for multiple days at a time the previous two months at least.  Note: before anyone advise that we ask for reimbursement or credit for lost service, I already have.  Over the course of multiple weeks and calls with overseas "agents", we accumulated a credit of a full month on our last internet bill, and still have credit on a future bill.

From the beginning of our personal internet experience, we've gotten our internet access through our phone lines.  It wasn't bad at all at the beginning, but once fiber optic service became available, our phone-line-internet-service began to deteriorate.  To the point, where we now feel like we've just been written off by Brightspeed (has been Embarq, has been Century Link) as relics of a bygone era that will eventually go the way of every other dinosaur.

Forced into the modern age, we watched curiously in recent weeks as fiber optic cables to our country neighborhood were being laid. The big utility trucks that for weeks narrowed every county road we traveled have moved on - taking their Ditch Witch drillers with them.  For at least a week, maybe two now, the busyness has been replaced with silence - as if all that activity had never happened.  Phone calls have netted no information about when internet service will be available through the shiny new underground cables.

Meanwhile, we're on two different waiting lists to get broadband through radio signal when the capacity is available for that.  The radio signal appears at the moment to be our preference.  Hopefully soon we'll get out of this frustrating spot we're in, as every day we have internet through our phone line feels precarious at best.  While this post is a bit of a rant, mostly, while I have internet service and the ability to easily write and publish a post, I'm wanting to let my readers know why I've been sporadic and downright absent so much here (and on your blogs) lately.  

Hopefully today my internet access will hold long enough for me to create a YOP update (which is actually my YOP Roundup post that is now a week late) and pre-publish it so it makes it out tomorrow - even if my internet is down.  If you see a Year of Projects post on Sunday, and I don't respond to comments, you can take a good guess at why.

And if you see me online here and there, your surprise will only be eclipsed by mine. Internet access has begun to feel like a priceless commodity.  Using it with little thought, feels frivolously careless.  

I marvel now how easy and like a game it felt to do a digital fast this past spring. You'd think that would have made me immensely patient when ours has gone out for days at a time. Aside from the frustration of not receiving a service we pay for - with a reasonable expectation that that service will be available - I am utterly dismayed at how much our lives are dependent on having internet access.  Bank records, medical records and communciations, calendars, news, information, inspiration...  

Everything is available on the internet, and when it is suddenly unavailable, I find myself at loose ends and feel unsettled.  And the moment I see that it is restored again, I feel a peace.

This is not right.  It's definitely not good. 

It just is.  

And I don't like the realization one bit.