What’s life like without home internet? Imagine trying to get motivated for your 5:30 AM workout, five days a week, with only access to the same small handful of perfectly motivating songs to keep you going. Imagine having to pack up your small kids and drive to some public place and spend money to justify occupying their business, crossing your fingers that the connection is good and the kids stay in their seats, so that you can Skype with your family that lives in another country. Imagine having to wait days after someone gives you a book before you can read it, because you need to find time to get to some internet access to download it to your Kindle. Imagine trying to decide between your spending money going to, say, a family trip for frozen yogurt, or enough megabytes for a handful of youtube songs.
If you’re rolling your eyes at my “Developing World Problems,” rest assured you’re in good company! I’m even rolling my eyes at myself. It’s pretty absurd. My family is not starving. Our house hasn’t been destroyed by any of the earthquakes thus far. My children have shoes, even if the little one only carries them to school and back in his hands and never actually puts them on his feet. No terminal cancer happening. We even have a car that works more often than it doesn’t. All of these annoyances that come from not having internet at home are not even a step down from all those funny non-problems that people call “First World Problems.” (Just google it if you’re not familiar. You won’t be disappointed.) It’s silly, it’s minor, and yet sometimes it’s go-outside-and-hack-at-the-weeds-with-the-machete level frustrating. “Do you want some cheese with that whine?” my Dad would have asked me, but in this case, yes I do! Thanks! So grab some cheese and a glass for yourself, because I’m going to lay it out for you.
“First World” Problems*
You would think I’d be accustomed, to not having home internet. I didn’t have it in the US until 2008. And I haven’t had it here in over four years. Plus I spent that year in Juquila when we theoretically had internet but it was so slow you couldn’t do much on it except from about 3am-7am when the rest of the town was sleeping.
I should be unfazed by my lack of convenience, after spending a year and a half without electricity, but I am fazed as f@*#. On a bad day, I am mad about it like a determined two year old whose parents just won’t let him eat the cat food. I mean, I just spent months in the US with unlimited internet access! Even in a car, driving on an expressway in the middle of nowhere! You people not only have phone signals, but also wireless on the phone! It’s unbelievable! The injustice of it all! (Okay, insert a little auto-eyeroll here)
Meanwhile at my house, which is only about a mile from “downtown” of my fair adopted city, we can’t get a half decent signal. Our neighbors across the street got the fancy antennae and all that jazz and tried last summer. That’s how we know it’s not worthwhile. I have slightly more than zero knowledge on technological functions of internet signals, so I can’t explain why it doesn’t work in my neighborhood. Because the gods of capitalism hate poor people? Wait, no, that’s the wrong answer…. I don’t know why; I just know that’s how it is.
By extension, don’t bother trying to tell me all the reasons why you, in some other town or some other country or even some other neighborhood, believe that we should be able to have home internet. “But this (insert name of wireless technology) exists now! It’s everywhere! I’m sure you can get a signal via (insert name of some other internet service) if nothing else.” No. Just stop. This is my neighborhood, run mostly by chickens, goats, and small children, and therefore I’m sticking to my empirical evidence: the neighbors tried and it didn’t work. That is all. We just have to wait until things… develop more, I suppose.
For now, however, this is my big chance to complain about my limited internet access, so here are a few other annoying inconveniences:
-I can’t answer calls when people try to video message me on facebook. I can’t video call people. Which means my kids and me keeping in touch with family members is really tricky. My biggest just lost her first tooth, but did she get to call any of the grandparents to show off? Nope, not a one.
-I can’t instantly show my kids pictures of prehistoric giant crocodiles that they’re curious about. I can’t take advantage of satisfying our quest for knowledge right away. All that info “at our fingertips,” and yet, not now, guys, sorry.
-I can’t let them watch videos so I can take a brief nap. (Apparently our DVD selection is boring them these days) Sleep is a human right! My kids are also pretty sure that a better selection of programs is in order.
-I can’t do workout videos beyond the ones I have on DVD. Health is important! I need new ideas!
-I can’t type out my electronic correspondence. I have to poke at my phone to try to send my long-winded messages back and forth to friends and family. I don’t know how people tolerate that pecking at the letters all the time.
-I can’t post my blog from home when I finish it at midnight (so often the case since that’s my only chance at private writing time).
-I can’t get updates on my computer or my phone.
-I can’t put on any song I want whenever I want. (Seriously, not having unlimited youtube might be the biggest crime, as far as I’m concerned.)
-I can’t apply for jobs, because I can’t upload my resume and all that from my phone.
-I can’t do any sort of general internet-based work nor fun when my kids are asleep or when they’re occupied playing nicely with a friend.
-I can’t practice and learn more American Sign Language.
-I can’t do research for my book. (YES you read that right!)
-I can’t take an online course or even watch my friend’s youtube videos on parenting.
That’s just the short list! Obviously, I can do all of these things when I’m somewhere with internet access, but that time is limited. Some of these things I can do somewhat on my cell phone, assuming I have internet megabytes or whatever left on my plan or from my internet-megas top-up. But anything involving video is too much for my plan for more than a few minutes.
I am glad that at least I have a Smartphone now. I am grateful for some access to the worldwide everything. I’m grateful for having a Kindle in the first place in this land of such rare access to books. I’m grateful for a computer where I can draft things and then post online. I recognize all of the things that I have going for me in this scenario, trust me. But sometimes it feels like giving me two chips out of the bag. Who the hell is satisfied with two chips? It puts the taste in your mouth and then rips it away from you! It is a limbo land of semi-access to the cyber-world. It’s an internet purgatory. I have some access; I’m not like in some technology-free hell. But I can see all the things I could be doing, just over the horizon, and I can’t quite get there.
It’s kind of like when we were living without electricity. It would have been way easier to deal with if I were living the whole-shebang lifestyle of no electricity. Like if I were living in some small old school village where everybody cooked three meals a day and didn’t need to refrigerate leftovers, where it was just the norm to go to bed at dark, or sit around a campfire talking into the night. If I lived in the kind of society where electricity wasn’t an utmost basic necessity, then I would have rocked it. As it was, however, I could see the lights on at a neighbor’s house two blocks directly in front of us, taunting me. Without electricity, but living in a society where electricity is the norm, we spent a ton of excess time and energy buying ice for a cooler and charging lamps to use at night, for example. As usual, it cost more to be poor, to have fewer services.
It’s the same with internet access. No, it’s not as necessary as electricity. But we live in an age of technology. It wouldn’t be a big deal to not have home internet, except that each year the world becomes more and more internet-based. Internet isn’t just a luxury anymore; it’s a necessity in many ways at this point. For example, my whole economic plan for coming back to Puerto post-quitting the university was to teach English online. It’s not actually practical to do that from some beachside bar or restaurant, believe it or not. It’s definitely not workable from the my normal free internet spot where every time there’s a sports event the seating area fills up with drunk cheering dudes and the internet connection slows to nearly negative numbers.
On a good day, my limbo land of partial access is smooth and nearly sufficient, signals flowing to my computer from the place that I’m teaching now, the place where I wait to pick up the kids from school (when there aren’t too many other folks), and a very kind friend’s house. On the good days, I’m stoked that I have some digital devices, and I’m satisfied with long old-school phone conversations with my friends and family. Some days it’s enough to have the self satisfaction of finishing a blog and knowing that I’ll find time and space to publish in the next day or two. Some days I can take a deep breath and roll my eyes at myself and my internet drama.
On the bad days, I console myself with toddler-style tantrums, complete with head-banging and rabid tears (I imagine myself having such tantrums, if nothing else). Be patient with me and my “Developing World Problems.” This, like everything else, won’t last forever.
*Yes, the whole “First World/Third World” terminology is really problematic, socially and personally. Here’s a fabulous article from those lovely, brilliant folks on NPR about who the now-never-mentioned Second World was, why these terms are problematic, and possible other descriptions. However, the “First World Problems” memes are hilarious.
exile to mexico 