The Big Disconnect — Part One

One Trump-free Month

Leaving then returning to the internet

There are a lot of articles on the internet about disconnecting from the internet. Many Earthlings have written how they disconnected from social media and the internet in general for a week or a month or longer and they described the resulting happiness and peace that they experienced as a result.

Such a disconnection makes a lot of sense to me and I have tried to do it from time to time. The big problem for me, though, is that I was never able to do it for more than twenty-four hours. One day is not a true disconnection. It is just a very brief break. It provided me with only a fleeting sense of what a true serious disconnection could bring. It was like an alcoholic going all morning without a drink.

So back in October when I moved to a different, more affordable apartment I saw that as an opportunity to do a more serious disconnection. After all, the very act of moving to a new location results in an internet disconnection and reconnection that can take a couple or a few days. I decided to wait to reconnect until I was fully moved in to the new apartment which would take me a couple of weeks. Two weeks is longer than I have gone without internet in over twenty years. Strongly committed, I decided to go for a true serious disconnection.

At the time I had no idea how long the disconnect would last or what I would experience.

Through outrageously ridiculous circumstances the disconnection lasted longer than I imagined. As for the results I am still only beginning to understand them now that I have reconnected.

There is one result that I am compelled to discuss already and this involves the first month of the disconnect. That month stretched from early October to early November, 2020. This month coincided with the last month before America’s presidential election.

During this month I had ZERO access to the internet. Since I have no TV or radio or newspaper subscription I had ZERO access to news. Since I was thoroughly engrossed in moving I never talked with any other humans about the news. I literally had no earthly idea what was going on with the planet for this month. I existed in a state of utter blissful ignorance.

It was so wonderful! It was so, so wonderful!

For an entire month I never once heard the name, Trump! Not once! During a month when America was more divided than ever I had no clue what was going on. I not only disconnected to the internet but I completely disconnected from the news.

This is something I had done before in years past but never at such a pivotal time in history. And then Election Day came and like the dutiful American citizen that I am I went to vote. It was very quick and painless. There were only two people in line ahead of me. I was in and out in less than twelve minutes.

For almost two weeks I never bothered to check with any news to find out the results to the election. To be honest, I was very afraid to find out. I feared a repeat of that horrible, horrible day back in November of 2016.

So I remained blissfully in my cloud of ignorance until the middle of November. That is when I took a teeny step to end my more-than month long disconnection from the internet. I had started writing again and in order to post some things to Medium I went to the local library to use their computers. I found out that due to the pandemic panic internet access for patrons was limited to just twenty minutes per day, five days a week.

With such limited access I could not spend a minute of those twenty minutes checking the news or most of my online accounts or email. I needed all twenty of those minutes to transcribe my hand-written stories and articles onto Medium. I was furiously transcribing those stories as fast as I could in order to publish them on the internet within the aforementioned twenty minutes.

To log into Medium from a public computer one must go through one’s email. After the process of logging into email then logging into Medium then logging out of both accounts after my quick transcribing those twenty minutes were up. Being on a public computer it was important to go through the logout procedures so that the next person to sit at that computer (after it was sterilized) could not gain access to my accounts.

Well, one day after logging out of my email I accidentally saw a headline. This is when I finally learned the results of the election.

I was so freaking relieved!

But although I had stopped my total disconnection from the internet and stopped my month-long disconnection to my addiction to writing, I was not going to stop my disconnection to the news. I was enjoying that way too much.

I know what some people may be thinking. I was an ignorant fool for sticking my head in the sand ignoring everything that was going on in the world. I was in a state of ignorant denial. I was denying my responsibility for being a part of this world. I was not contributing and not participating. I simply was not helping things get better.

Well, I strongly disagree with this assessment. During the six weeks that my noggin was firmly implanted in the ground I feel I was helping the worldly situation much more so than watching the freaking news throughout every day. Instead of absorbing all the extreme negativity of the news and empowering it with my energy, by ignoring it I was free to put forth nothing but positive energy.

During this time I was blessing everything in sight. I was blessing every human I came into contact with (not knowing their personal political opinions). I was blessing every animal, every tree, every contrail left by a jet flying overhead. I repeatedly blessed myself and every situation I encountered. I blessed the sunrise and the sunset. I blessed the food that I ate. I blessed the ground that I was continuously walking over. I blessed the stars. I blessed my new apartment. I blessed the birds. I blessed life, which, of course, is a blessing in itself. I was pouring forth a butt-load of blessings in every direction.

Does this not help the planet more than obsessing over all the extreme negativity of the news? Does it not?

Back when I kept up with all the news I was taking in an enormous amount of negativity. This is not beneficial to one’s state of mind, body, or soul. Normally, one does not realize this until they shut off the intake valve to all this extremely negative energy. Once the energy conduits have fully cleared out it becomes glaringly obvious how intensely we are affected by it all.

To finally be clear of it all we are left with an intensely radiant peace. We become more aware of our every action, our every movement, our every thought, and our every reaction. It becomes easier to touch the joy at the core of all things. It becomes easier to understand that all things must pass but also that joy expressed has no ending. Expressed, joy goes out in a wave that encircles the planet only to come back to us. So does everything else we put out. The choice as to what we put out becomes crystal clear.

How gloriously wonderful it was to be news-free became ever more apparent to me once I reconnected. The negativity that comes with the news seems to have only gotten worse. Now when I see a news headline I can distinctly feel the negativity coming from it. Being reconnected to the internet makes it difficult not to be affected by this negative energy because it is everywhere but I am now more consciously aware of it and I try to avoid as best I can. In this way my six-week disconnection from the news and the internet was a very positive experience for me. I am so glad I did it.

But there is another disconnect that I underwent that has been at least as intense if not more so and that is my disconnect from my own writing. I went approximately five weeks without writing so much as one single word! This is longer than I have gone in almost thirty years! I have a feeling that I will be writing about that eventually, too.

I am still in the process of realizing and evaluating my disconnection experiment. There is a lot to take in. One thing that I have learned for sure is that…

It is always good to unclog the pipes.

…to be continued…