The Verge - Offlines

Offline: how to use the internet

2013-05-03T21:25:01Z

Whew! What a week.

First came Monday, and then Tuesday, and then there was the internet. You know how in Star Trek when they engage the warp engines and the Enterprise kind of stalls for a moment while its projection blurs toward the future, toward the stars, and then it’s gone? I’m in the blur phase.

I feel severely disoriented, totally overwhelmed, and kind of… happy about it?

At 12:00AM on Wednesday, May 1st, I rejoined the internet. I guess I thought I’d just start using the internet again, see some funny cat videos, and that would be that. Instead, I almost had a panic attack as I attempted to pull off basic 21st-century maneuvers like managing multiple tabs in a single browser window. Of course my inability to cope, which involved me shouting at my coworkers and incoherently stumbling through a discussion of pornography, was livestreamed to the internet.

I couldn’t be more proud. Because the internet was scary, and the livestream told that story.

I looked like I needed a hug, because I did

After the livestream ended, I went outside for a cigarette to settle down — because I’m apparently a huge smoker now, which wasn’t a big deal when it was just a thing I did instead of a thing open for discussion by all ‘net users. Coworkers exited the office a couple at a time, and gave me handshakes that turned into hugs, or just straight-up hugs. I looked like I needed a hug, because I did. I felt traumatized by the internet.

And yet, somehow enticed. I stayed at the office until 3AM, clicking, scrolling, and tabbing. When I got home at 3:30AM I wanted to get back online, but mercifully I didn’t know the Wi-Fi password yet, and my roommate was asleep, and so I went to bed. My mind churned for half an hour before I slept.

Maybe there’s something about information that makes you want more of it. Something about the fear I have of the internet that produces adrenaline. Something that makes me love the internet as much as I try to hate it.

The next morning, armed with the Wi-Fi password, I attempted to “work” from home. I’m sure it was cute for my coworkers to observe, like an old-time newspaper man getting his first WordPress blog. When I arrived at the physical office, I felt a little more useful. I know I want to “be with people” on the internet, but I have to relearn that skill. For now, I need to be face-to-face with someone to feel like an interaction is actually working.

Unfortunately, face-to-face was rare, because it seemed almost impossible to step away from the internet. In a meeting I found myself poking around on an iPad, catching myself, setting it in my lap and trying to listen really hard, and then diving back into the iPad a minute later. I had a recent Vine that was really "blowing up," so I was tracking the likes, then I’d swipe over to my email and become utterly bewildered, then I’d see if I had any new snapchats. My distraction was obvious to everyone in the room, despite the fact they all had laptops open in front of them. I just can’t split my focus like them yet. It hurts to even consider.

In fact, I started to feel alone at the office. Because I couldn’t be in two places at once, I chose to be inside the computer. I went full Tron; I jacked into the Matrix. Snapchats became reminders of moments I wasn’t present for, work emails felt like a foreign language I couldn’t converse in, and on Twitter I was just a madman shouting on a street corner.

That evening I watched funny YouTube videos with my sister and my roommate, but I had trouble setting the internet down when they turned on an actual movie. I sunk into my iPad and lost track of the conversation, and humanity.

On Thursday I was worse. I started to talk loud and fast, and felt panicked constantly. I sent emails to the wrong places, put calendar entries on the wrong days, and jogged around the office like a lost kid in a supermarket, clutching my laptop to my chest. Also, I felt like I might have lasers inside of my eyes (I forgot my glasses at home), and so it was weird to look at people. I got really hungry, and a coworker brought me food, but then I didn’t eat much of it.

I want to be a part of it all, but the trouble is I still want to be a little apart from it, too

But at least I was working. At 8PM there were four of us left in the office and I proudly looked up from the computer: I’d managed to process my work email all the way back to April 30th. Only 21,076 unread messages left to go.

At home at last, I Skyped with my parents after 15 minutes troubleshooting my Wi-Fi router. They told me I looked tired, which is something parents are very good at. And it was so good to see them, and it was so good to be on the internet. I knew it then. In two mere days I’d made a 20-year technological leap. The future is amazing. We have so much cool stuff. I want to be a part of it all, but the trouble is I still want to be a little apart from it, too.

Afterwards I meant to chill and listen to internet-streamed music, but instead I watched StarCraft videos and ate cereal. And then I finally closed the YouTube tabs, put the music on, pulled up the text editor on my Mac, and began to write.

Everything is moving so fast, so I’m not sure how to explain what’s happening. I recently half-seriously told someone I want to be an "internet caterpillar" when I get back, not an internet butterfly. But I feel like the metamorphosis is happening without my consent. I guess I should get some sleep.

Still, it feels good to write. I know how to do this.

Offline: boiling it down to the essentials

2013-03-26T18:00:06Z

At the end of a Veggie Tales episode, from his perch on a kitchen counter, flanked by his faithful sidekick Larry the Cucumber, Bob the Tomato asks, "what have we learned today?" It’s an important part of classic children’s programming: after the entertainment comes the morals. Come for the hilarious veggie hijinks, stay for the turn-your-life-around-kid Bible verse.

Well, my veggie hijinks are about to come to a close, and now it’s time for me to boil them down into digestible Life Lessons and, you know, write a bestselling book about my experiences.

Except I’m having problems with the distillation process. Virtually since day one of my time without the internet I’ve been considering a book on the topic. I’d expect no less of anyone who underwent a similar journey into the scary unknown of not checking his email every day and staying off Twitter. In fact, at first I thought I had a slam dunk thesis: leaving the internet is so great OMG.

Old habits reared their ugly heads

Leaving the internet was so great… at first. It was the relief of pressure that I’d wanted for years. No more push notifications, no more calendar invites, no more reply-all’d email threads, no more retweets, friend requests, text messages, or rabbit holes. I was alone with my thoughts, I had all the time in the world to read books and frolic outdoors in the beautiful spring and summer days of 2012. I was more productive, better looking, and perhaps even taller than during the six years I spent as a professional tech writer.

But then old habits reared their ugly heads. Time-wasting habits like video games and pulpy sci-fi novels, and then more disturbing signs like a general avoidance of social activities. I’ve watched every decent movie in my corner store’s Redbox, and half of the shitty ones. I’ve spent more time than you could imagine in this past year simply laying on my couch. Like, just laying there.

These don’t make for catchy book titles:

No Internet, No Life: The Paul Miller Story
How To Disconnect From Reality In 365 Days
At First I Liked Not Using The Internet But Then It Got Kind Of Sucky

Ironically, the fact that I hadn’t begun working on a book became itself a negative narrative that made book-writing sound even less attractive.

The internet doesn't make me who I am; I do it to myself, thanks

And man, doesn’t this just suck? Like, what a friggin' wasted opportunity! I’ve had more time to myself, more freedom, more creative space, than any quasi-responsible adult could ever hope for, and I’ve been pouring it down the drain. Why couldn’t someone better leave the internet who would actually make something of their time?

My friends and co-workers started to encourage me to leave the house, if only so I’d have more material to write about. And maybe look a little less pale. Go on adventures, Paul! Seize the day! And I guess I went camping, so that’s something. I biked down the L.A. river on impulse. But mostly I went on boat rides with Odysseus, and on long walks with Socrates, or bullet-strewn romps through Borderlands' planet Pandora.

If anything, I’ve learned that the internet doesn’t make me who I am; I do it to myself, thanks. But I could’ve gotten that advice out of skimming a paperback self-help book in Barnes & Noble and saved everybody a lot of time and trouble.

Why couldn’t someone better leave the internet who would actually make something of their time?

So, what to write a book about? I’ve thought about writing a fictional account of a slightly handsomer, slightly taller Paul Miller who does go on adventures and learns all sorts of valuable, distillable morals that Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber would approve of. I thought about just ditching the book altogether and focusing on my sci-fi novel, and maybe attempt to work in some “Offline” thoughts allegorically or something. Sometimes I wonder if I should just quit kidding myself that I’m a writer and take up something simpler like food delivery or paper collation.

The other day I went outside to find my bike, which I’d left locked up in front of my block’s 7-11. When I got to it, I discovered it still tethered to the pole, but flat on the ground and somehow misshapen. Someone, it seems, had attempted to wrench the bike away from its station, using the bike itself for leverage. They managed to mangle the center post — a death sentence for an aluminum frame — and snapped off part of the crank for good measure.

It’s hard to explain how much the bike means to me. Not as much its particulars — in fact, it’s kind of been a lemon from the start, and I’m looking forward to getting a more reliable and forgiving steel frame. But just the simple concept of “bike.” I had “bike” and now I don’t have “bike.” Moreover, “bike” met an untimely, violent death. It all seems so cruel.

What I’ve realized is that my life is very small. “Bike” makes up a good chunk of what my life is. Losing it was like taking an ice cream scoop out of my soul.

Without the internet, my world has shrunk

Without the internet, my world has shrunk. It’s all very simple, and if maybe I still don’t understand it, at least I can see it all at once. My folder called “notes” has 1,097 items in it. 470 of those text files were created or modified after I left the internet. That’s literally all I’ve created since I left the internet. No comments or message board posts or like buttons or text messages out there in the ether. My deceased bike is in my kitchen next to my keyboard. My medications are in the table that has the record player, and next to that table is a shelf full of records and books. Across the room is an Xbox 360 and a PS3 slung beneath a 1080p projector. On the wall hangs a classical guitar, and there’s always a pick floating around somewhere. There’s a restaurant downstairs, the loft with my bed in it is surrounded by electronics and books and video games, church is around the corner, my skateboard leans up against the shoe rack, an unused exercise machine is collapsed behind the couch.

I don’t have a browser history, or a number of “cookies” tracking my exploits, or a Klout score, or a comment count. Not that those things weren’t real, or that they weren’t part of who I was or who I will be. But for now, for just a single month more, I get to look at and think about a very small, simple Paul Miller that has a broken bike and a book to write. The moral has yet to be distilled, but at least we’ve boiled down the man.

Paul Miller will regularly be posting dispatches from the disconnected world on The Verge during his year away from the internet. He won't be reading your comments, but he'll be here in spirit.