You Don’t Know What You’ve Got ‘Til It’s Gone

That’s true on many levels for this trip, particularly on the big, critical, life-changing level and on the tiny, trivial, get-over-it level.

I’m the one dealing the most personally with the latter. Where I’m staying at the moment, not only do I not have wi-fi, or any kind of internet access at all, I also do not have any access to television. (I guess I do have limited access through my phone, but it’s not 4G, or even 3G, so it’s slooooooooooooow.)

That’s supposed to be called “camping.”

Contributing factors are context and background. When you’re off on a camping trip, mentally you know that you’re not going to have internet or television. That’s usually one of the reasons that you’re going in the first place. So while the absence of such things might be an inconvenience or a major change in your routine, it’s expected, even anticipated.

When you’re in a normal, household environment you have routines and things you’re comfortable with. “Comfort actions,” the equivalent of “comfort food.” These routines seem trivial – until they’re involuntarily absent.

This can happen if you have a power outage, for example. But when something like that happens you’re probably still at home, so you have access to other resources there. Books, magazines, working in the garden, schmoozing with the neighbors, going out to a movie someplace where they still have power. Whatever.

Now imagine that this involuntary removal of your “comfort actions” IS happening when you’re still in a household environment, even one you’re accustomed to, but a place where you have limited alternative resources. (As you might have guessed from some of the pictures over the last few days, I’m staying at my Mom’s house.) On top of that, add in that you’re there alone.

Big, empty house. Alone. Stressful circumstances. Those “comfort actions” would really come in handy.

After a long day, to relax at home everyone has their own routine. In our case it generally involves something on the internet (writing, surfing, social media) while having the ballgame or some other television program on as background noise. Or maybe there’s a show we want to watch and we put away the laptops and iPads. Or we can just watch a DVD or movie.

Without any of that, it’s jarring.

I can’t even go to the “how did they survive this pre-television and pre-internet” argument. I actually remember those days, and we did just fine because we didn’t miss what didn’t even exist yet. Our “comfort actions” in that time were completely different than they are now.

Dealing with the here-and-now, it’s a real pain in the ass soldering through the absence of those integral parts of our lives while in a setting that should by rights include them, and the almost total lack of any substitutes.

As Joni Mitchell said.

Naturally, we all adjust. I’m finding things to do on my computer that don’t involve internet access. I have a decent-sized chunk of my music collection on my laptop, so there’s plenty of music to listen to. I started finding treasure troves of family photos, all originals from the film days, so I went out and got a scanner. That should keep me entertained for a few nights.

But I still wish I had the Angels game on the television in the background.