The zen of going offline

The first sensation that hits you really hard when you go offline is the oppressing silence. I cannot describe this feeling in words except to compare it with waking up at 3 in the morning and feeling momentarily lost. Then slowly a more powerful sensation swells beneath the remnants of my growing awareness and suddenly I realise that I am in another place where time and space seems almost to bend imperceptibly to yet another life rhythm….again I can’t describe this new sense of consciousness in words. Perhaps words are meaningless in this new domain. Maybe my mind is slowly reclaiming something significant that was once lost. After all I didn’t live my whole life in the digital world. I belong to an analog vintage where to make a call. I had to put coins into a machine and press buttons, use a writing instrument that glided across creamy paper, put it in an envelop, lick a stamp….you get the idea. Neither was I really the sort of man who was in tune with the digital age either. It just came along and I jumped into on the wagon for the sole reason, not to do so would mean I would be marooned in my own head….my point is going offline isn’t new or shouldn’t be, as this was how I had always lived the better part of my life. Nonetheless, I trudge as best I can in this newscape. I tell myself this is new so I need to be a patient observer instead of reacting to whatever presents itself. But soon I find myself entangled in some invisible web of deceit that all conspires to convince me what I am doing is simply silly and high unneccessary, but despite my many real and imagined prostestations. I go right on with a sense of indifference that I much prefer to term conviction, or maybe its pride. Then it slowly it dawns on me….this is really who I am and who I have always been.