A World of Difference

I’m used to a world—either at home or at school—where the internet is just sort of there. Whenever I’m at a computer, or practically wherever I take my laptop I have some sort of wired or wi-fi connectivity. While (take a minute to look for a link at lj about bad oxy internet) my connection hasn’t always been great, it’s basically always been accessible from wherever I was.

I could always blog.

Sussex is different. They have internet access, but not really. Most of the time the connection’s down, and their wireless bubble extends from the hidden router like fish extends from its tank. Needless to say, I certainly don’t get access in my room.

On the one hand, the inconvenience of the internet has made me more social in the evenings than I might otherwise be, but on the other, I’ve read four books and eaten 18 meals in the past four days out of sheer boredom. [Edit: this was yesterday] At 6:30 everyone (and I mean everyone) starts drinking, which is fine if drinking what you want to do for the evening. But it makes in incredibly difficult to “take a night off.� Because taking a night off means continuing to not do anything for the next five hours.

The inconvenient internet means that I write my posts offline, in my room. I tick away at the keyboard in Word, painfully aware that my dictionary is limited and that I’ll have to track through what I’ve written to find the appropriate links later.

It also reduces the immediacy of what I write. I feel like my posts aren’t always in connection with what’s “happening� online. Sometimes it’s a good idea to write an original post—maybe someone will respond to you, but mostly I think the blogosphere is a conversational place, and a good blog should reflect not only the writer but the fact that the writer is, in fact, part of it.