Netaholics Anonymous

My name is Yang-May and I’m a netaholic. We lost our broadband connection last week and I found myself having a panic attack. I couldn’t breathe, my gut churned, I felt anxious and stressed. And as with all junkies, Angie was my partner in crime, too and she paced the house, fretting about where we were going to get our fix.

We called our PC repairman like junkies calling their supplier. When Roger arrived, Angie hovered tensely by as he tested the router, checked the wired connections and spoke at length with the broadband help desk. I called in regularly from my office for a moment to moment update. Would we get our supply by the end of the day?

No, Roger said, there was nothing more he could do – the problem was at the supplier end and it would take them a couple of days to give us a call back to let us know when we would be re-connected. A couple of days! Aaaaargh!

Our emails! My blog! YouTube! Shopping on Amazon! My supply of podcasts from iTunes! Angie and I have been in a state of shock since last week. The call from the supplier never came and I have chased in a state of desperation but we are still off-line. Our universe feels like it has come to an end.

But we are going to be strong. I hold in my mind Frank Sinatra in “The Man with the Golden Arm” going cold turkey for days in a locked room and Ewan McGregor in “Trainspotting” being swallowed by his bed as he de-toxed. If they can do it, we can do it.

So I took the opportunity of time offline to express my existential netaholic crisis in art. This post is illustrated with the result of my expressionistic efforts last week of My Hell Without Broadband.

I wouldn’t say we are exactly “clean” as yet. We are hanging on by a thread while we wait for re-connection. And if we have to wait too long, we shall have to change suppliers, whatever the cost…

~~~

PS. To keep Fusion View going, I am writing this on a Word document, taking it in to work on my flash memory stick and uploading it to the blog in my lunch hour.