An Unintentional Experiment

Molly...anxious, attention-seeking, affectionate

Shaggy: heat-seeking, wobbly, loudest purrs ever

I live on a farm. We don’t have animals or chores (beyond these three cats and their litter boxes), but we sometimes deal with things that city dwellers don’t fully comprehend. Some of the challenges include not being able to go for a peaceful walk or bike ride anytime I want (the major highway makes it unpleasant), occasional disagreeable smells from the neighbouring pig farm, and frequent glitches in our internet connection.

Patch: PTSD, gorgeous, ellusive

It’s complicated, and since I don’t speak computer, I won’t even attempt to explain why it happened or how it was fixed. For the purposes of this post you only need to know that we were essentially without an internet connection for roughly two weeks.

Yes…you read correctly. No typo. There were a few days in the middle when there was a weak and sloooow connection, and a few stolen moments at a London Williams Cafe, but for essentially practically almost two weeks I was without email or facebook. I did not tweet for two weeks (and the world did not end).

I didn’t panic…I have a crackberry. I did attend to urgent emails.

I spent the first few days in shock…denial…withdrawal…

Then, after a few days, it hit me…I was sitting in the kitchen looking at the dirty dishes and thought “I’ve got nothing else to do. I might as well do them.” So I did the dishes (and it felt good), then I did the laundry, weeded the garden, read, golfed, weeded some more (and it felt good)…golfed more, and before I knew it I could see my kitchen table and then…MY whole HOUSE WAS CLEAN.

The climax of the experience was yesterday, when I spent eight hours cleaning my garage. The internet was re-connected around noon, but, after a few quick must-have games of wordtwist, I completed the task and now have an immaculate garage!

Now this was not a controlled experiment…it was strictly a case study; a qualitative rather than quantitative project. But my conclusion is clear…when I stopped wasting hours following other people’s lives on facebook and attending to unimportant emails…my own life came back. I GOT SHIT DONE.

So forgive me if I don’t say happy birthday.  I may be scrubbing my toilet.  But I do care.