Dead Slow and Stop

My broadband connection ground to a halt on Friday (the AOL browser I use is essentially a virus, as it’s now decided to corrupt about a million drivers on my PC). What I’ve learnt from being completely internet free for the last few days is that the internet is a giant repository of sparkly things designed to pleasantly waste your time whilst giving you the impression you are being productive. I can get lost for hours in Wikipedia looking up obscure mental illnesses, all the time kidding myself that it’s all valuable research – that’s when I’m not stocking up on cheap CDs from Amazon or putting band posters up for sale on EBay or reading blogs or checking out what the hell happened to Danny Lloyd after he starred in The Shining (answer? Not a lot). I love the internet and I wouldn’t be without it, but when AOL decides to function, the temptation is always there to tinker, to read one more blog, to buy one more CD, to check one more fact.

Coupled with AOL’s all out war on my sanity, the deadline for the treatment I’m writing has just been pushed back to the end of August, so I now have the time to try and make it as bright and shiny as I possibly can. Ordinarily, this would mean a huge festival of procrastination, but as the internet is down, I’m forced to concentrate. And it’s actually going pretty well, partially due to the fact that I don’t have all the alluring bells and whistles of the web to tempt me. I’m in the fortunate position that I have a job that enables me to work from home a little bit, which means on the odd occasion I can shut down Outlook and actually hear myself think. Maybe there is some merit in trying to slow down a little and having an internet free day a week – but I’d like it to be on my terms rather than when my positively fundamentalist ISP dictates.

By Tuesday, my PC will be fixed and normal service will be resumed – which means more prevarication and the purchasing of more crap I don’t need. Hey ho.

Oh, I saw Nick Cave in Woodingdean on Friday morning... which was nice.