An Incident of Panic

Late last evening my internet went down.  I pushed the restart button on my modem but that did not fix it so I decided to wait and see if service was restored.

I thought I would use my phone to connect to the web but that wouldn't work, which led me to think it was a major problem with the provider (possibly like the cyberattack on the library last fall).  I realize now that I should have turned off wifi on my phone since that was working and it would continue to try and connect that way as long as it found my wifi signal.   I tried calling both ways from my house to/from my cell phone and that wasn't working.  So I concluded - major problem.

That's when I started going in to distress mode - something that I have found happens so easily as I get older - I just don't have the confidence that I can deal with things the way I did when I was younger.   Now I can understand and sympathize with my parents who seemed to get dithery as they aged - I'm doing the same thing.

Most of my tv access was down - except for the few channels I can pick up with my box antenna, which reminded me to be glad of the DVDs I still own.   I thought of ebooks and looked at my readers and became aware of the number of books I own but hadn't actually downloaded - again a reminder to be grateful for the physical books I still own.

This afternoon I am going to a birthday function out in the west end of the city. I had decided to splurge and take an Uber rather than transit but got panicky when I thought that my cell wasn't working so how was I going to connect with Uber?  I could take transit but I wasn't sure exactly where the house was and didn't know what subway stop to use or bus to take and I didn't have internet access to maps, and I no longer own a paper map of the city.

I decided there was no point going on fussing and went to bed.  But things were on my mind and I woke up this morning with stomach pain ( not unusual when I'm stressed) and took antacids and then an acid blocker - that helped somewhat but I'm still feeling off.

I got up, checked the modem which still showed a red light. I checked my phone and had that moment when I thought to turn off the wifi and was able to connect to the net.  And see that there were no reports of a major outage.  I went to my provider's site and found their auto fix function - that led me through rebooting my modem and then unplugging it (something which really should have occurred to me last night!). Finally my internet was back!  

A lot of fuss and stress but it really shows me just how much I depend on the internet to live my life day to day.  I've written before about my thoughts of moving to an independent living seniors building and this is the sort of happening that makes me feel that that is a good idea.  I live alone, I've never been really good at coping with things, and perhaps it is time to make that move before I get to be even more of a ditherer who can't cope on his own.