A couple of days ago, I wrote about my Wife and I being on a financial diet. A couple of the expenses we cut are the home internet, and the data package on my phone.
Over all, this has been a good thing, but I have learned that the data package on the phone was a lot more important than I thought it was. I didn’t realize how much I depended on constant access to the internet.
Some of the things I miss most are:
- Email – I’m a Painting contracter and for many of my clients – real estate agents mainly, email is the default communication medium. They often forget that I am not sitting at a desk looking at a computer. I have really grown to enjoy email communication more than telephone calls.
- Twitter and Facebook - I know it sounds funny, but I use both often. I volunteer with our church’s youth group and the kids only communicate on Facebook. For good or bad, you can get a pretty good overview of their life, and initiate contact when necessary. The youth workers are all on twitter and we have a constant conversation going on with each other, all day. We have really grown close, and sometimes say that the biggest reason we work with the youth is to hang around each other.
- Google Reader – I used to subscribe to around 160 feeds, and scan them regularly in free moments, starring the ones I want to read more carefully, and read those at home in the evening, over the now nonexistent home internet.
- Google Maps – It was so nice to select an address in an email and view a map and directions on my phone.
- Evernote – I use it constantly, and while the Blackberry app is practically unusable, being able to email or tweet a note into my notebook was invaluable.
- Productivity Apps – Mileage logs, notes, blog posts etc.While they are still there the ability to easily export or sync them is very missed.
- YouVersion, and other online Bibles - I use You version a lot. It has a great interface, and the reading plans are great. having the day’s reading sent to you via text or email is awesome. Also our church has started using it, with the sermon notes, small group homework, bulletin announcements and more, right on your phone. when the sermon is over, you can save your notes to the YouTube site, and/or email them to yourself. A little hint – If you use Evernote, you can also email your notes straight to a notebook.
I’ve had to really change the way I do a lot of things, and some things temporarily give up. I swing by the library, Starbucks, bookstore or our Church almost every day to get my email, and now use Thunderbird to read and compose emails and blog posts rather than the Gmail web page. I am experimenting with FeedDemon for RSS feeds because it integrates with Google Reader, so I can read my feeds Off Line.
My Twitter use has been very scaled back. I have created a group of people I personally know, activated text alert only for those people, and that is it. My @replies have to wait until I have extended time online, usually once or twice a week, and I hardly ever am able to view the stream. My Facebook use has really suffered. I get email notifications of messages, and comments on my status updates (posted via twitter through text messages) that I try to respond to when I download my email. These are some of the drawbacks of not having constant or convenient internet access, and how I have tried to deal with them. Next time, I will discuss some of the benefits that I have discovered.How would your life suffer, or drastically change without constant access to the internet?
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