The Lost Month

I remember the day clearly, a vivid recreation of refracted light long past. It was the 28th of June, I was sitting in a car, headed towards a known destination I had yet to discover. The internet superhighway, a long, winding road through cyberspace, always taking you to where you need to go eventually. So when the day came, June 28th, when I had nowhere to go, I set off on a roadtrip. I only needed one direction, the one that would discover my destination.

Searches and browsers sped past me, heading to their goal like a arrow, a faint green line the only remnant of their passing. I moved much slower, coding through cyberspace like a explorer in the jungle, machete slicing foliage. A hitchhiker where a taxi fare is free. Seemingly holding myself back. But the internet always takes you to where you need to go, if you know how to ask. It took me out. Barred me. No more surfing the web for modern.

What was I to do in this digital era without a digital device? Ok that's wrong, I had my watch. It is a cheap 10$ dual digital and analogue black plastic cylinder, where the time always seems to be off by a hour or two. Oh well, time is only a concept.
I had a book also. Dune, by Frank Herbert. A sci fi classic, written in 1965. There were no digital devices there, and that was set far into the future. The past portrays the future in funny ways to anyone living in the future. We live in back to the future's future, and how similar are those two? There are exceptions, children of men does a stellar job of portraying the near future, with a few exceptions (it IS a alt history). Not that I could see any of that, as I was device free.

Why did I do this to myself? I'm not sure. Most of my life, everyone's lives are interwoven with technology. I make digital escapes from reality for a living. If anyone, I should have hated staying apart from tech the most. The most of who? Well, I was spending a month training to be a counselor at a summer camp, and the rule was airtight. No phones. Not that that stopped most, quite a few other trainees were caught using their phone.

It was important to me, this connection to nature. I live in a big city, where the sounds of technology surround you, encompassing all your life. At camp, the three small cell towers far away slowly blink on and off at night, reminding aircraft not to fly near them. And that's it. It was hard, being without my white noise. It was replaced with melancholy bird chirps in the morning, crickets at night. A sky where you can actually see stars. No milky way, but stars for sure. On our first night the ISS passed overhead, and put into perspective how far away technology can be. But day two told us how close it always is.

A control panel, overgrown by vines from many years of neglect has a large place in my heart for a strange sort of beauty, nature retaking human creations, using the creations for themselves. A roof to a open air cabin, intentionally potted to let moss grow. Organic architecture, reclaimed materials combined with industrial strength steel, is a beautiful combination. I came back July 27th, one month later. For cyberspace, it was a month lost. And I'm not going to say it was a month gained, or any other esoteric bullshit. I did not learn from the experience, I had done it before. But I did grow from it, like you should do from everything. Growth is what separates, pardon my dune reference, "The Humans from the People."

So grow, listen to other opinions. Don't let them change you, but don't bash them either. Grow from them, use them to make your opinion better. And so we come full circle, from a strange parable about the internet, to a challenge overcome, to some advice. Why did I write this? It's a puzzle, a code. What to? Does that really matter? The internet will take you where you need to go, as long as you know how to move through it. Slide through crowds, avoid traffic jams. Everything is a red herring if you think too hard about something. Most things are simpler then they seem.

Grow from this.

 

uhh.. did you write this?

 

It is midnight and I was very bored.

 

SCREW THIS TECHNOLOGY IS THE WAY TO GO!

okay but actually I went camping last weekend in the mountains and it's sad that I had forgotten how beautiful the stars were. Having no cell service wasn't bad, it was just... Different. Getting away from it all is nice every once in a while, though a month might be a bit much for me.

 

After more than three days without being on the internet, my head begins to replace its physical stimuli with memes. It gets really bad. Everything I say becomes a meme, everything I hear is interpreted as a meme, everything I see is just a game.
I am lost without the internet.
I am a part of the internet. Not an organ, not even a tissue, just a single cell. A muscle cell? A neuron? An expendable epithelial cell? That is not for me to decide.
But the internet is part of me. Without it, I cannot exist to a full extent.

 

Dang I'm impressed.

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It's quite interesting I suppose. It can sometimes be boring but it also is a lot more relaxing

 

I know I've said this already, but I must say I really am impressed. It's a unique piece that kinda makes me understand how u felt. Write more @modern !
I quite liked this

 

Thanks! Ill definitely write more, but I need a topic...

Maybe a short story? I'm quite good at speculative fiction.