Like many people these days, my typical workday involves lots of email exchanges, Web site investigating, file networking and online researching. If I’m not out at interviews or taking pictures for next week’s edition, I’m most likely at the office waiting for a little red dot to appear at the bottom of my screen; I’ve got mail.

When I arrive home at the end of my typical workday, plopping down in front of a computer screen and checking my email is almost as natural as slipping off my sandals and taking the sunglasses off my head. After discovering no new mail has come in during my commute, I like to pull up my favorite online pastime, World of Warcraft. Once I get frustrated with that, I check my email again and maybe compose a blog post until my wife gets home. Since we don’t have cable, we watch television episodes online while making and eating dinner together. 

I’ll check my email, see if the blog is getting any hits, and maybe step into the shoes of my World of Warcraft alter-ego one more time before bed.

Derailed by service providers and system administrators both at home and work, my life has been offline for the past 72 hours.

Thrust backwards to a point where I had no online fantasy game identity, no email signature or the latest blog entry, I am coping with my purely three-dimensional existence in a variety of ways. 

Paper, that archaic carbon copy backup for online content, has returned to the forefront of my life to help me pay bills, write notes, keep a schedule and stay updated.

I found an old, but favorite, standalone strategy game and put it on our computer. The software, which must be five years old, makes our cheap modern laptop look like a supercomputer and is still as entertaining as it was before the creation of any of the massive multiplayer online genres.

I have fallen back into an old routine I developed to keep myself busy in college: when I have nothing to do, I drop to the floor and do pushups until I either come up with something or collapse. Not only are my arms sore, but I’m getting much better at finding things to do, quickly.

Work should be a pain but somehow I’m finding myself miraculously ahead of deadline. I blame you, small red icon, for those weeks when deadline seems to rush at me head-on.

Since I’ve been disconnected by the powers that be, I don’t feel like there’s some runaway train I’m going to miss if I’m not online to catch it, I can’t do anything about my 19-year-old brother-in-law’s World of Warcraft character surpassing mine, I don’t worry about getting blog-worthy photographs and if something really important comes up, somebody can call me.

I am in one place at once.

Maybe it’s just the break in my normal routine that has me feeling refreshed, but as I listen to my wife and coworkers curse the recent bout of connective impotency that seems to be surrounding me, I’m wondering if we should all go completely wireless every now and then. Not on a vacation where you do nothing but dread returning, but right in the middle of a hectic schedule. “Disconnect Day” could be used by employers as a fire drill for moments when we are forced to remember how things were done before everything was a keystroke and a click away. 

My Disconnect Day was Monday, May 5, which kicked off “Battle with Little Red Icon” week. 

                                                            -Nate Jones