I remember the warm summer nights when we sat on our porch in Halmstad, watching the dark sky light up from lightning. I loved it and couldn’t understand how my cousin could be afraid of something so beautiful. Last Monday, I realized why. When we watched lightning from afar, it was nothing else than beautiful. We saw a flash of lightning, counted the seconds between the flash and the thunder clap and heard the distant rumbling noise. When lightning is close, it’s different. Last week, we had the worst thunderstorm and lightning I’ve ever experienced.
When I heard the first thunder I immediately shut off my computer. As I was about to disconnect all the other electrical appliances, the power went off. I couldn’t help but getting a bit scared when I heard the next sharp, explosive sound and pictures fell from the walls. I looked out the window, saw the next lightning strike and counted the seconds before the thunder clap. Didn’t even get to three. Not good. Every second stands for about 300 meters. Less than 30 seconds means the storm is less than 10km away. The chance that the next strike will happen within that 10km is 80%.
When I heard two more explosive sounds, I thought about asking my neighbours if I could sit in their car — the safest place during lightning. I opened the front door, but didn’t want to go out because of the large hail.
Eventually the thunder stopped, the hail ceased falling, I caught the first glimpse of the sun, and the lightning became the talk of the town. A house only a few blocks from where I live was struck by lightning. Fortunately no one was hurt. The only things broken were the cord and the AC adapter to my laptop, and the Internet modem which, according to Telia customer support, had lost contact with the station.
I went to Siba (where I bought my laptop), but they didn’t have the right power supply in stock and to repair the broken adapter or order a new one would take at least a week. I’m not a techie in any way and needed help to install a new Internet modem. Luckily our computer-skilled friend could help us the following week. Until then, I had no laptop and no Internet. I could go to Linköping’s library and make use of their “60-minute free internet a day for everyone with library cards” deal. Or I could lend a friend’s laptop, or I could go to the Internet café.
“Perhaps I should focus on other (non-computer related) things for a while? Can I really stay away from my laptop and internet over a week? What about all my e-mails? My blog? My writing assignments?” When I remembered that I, apart from planned blog posts, didn’t have any deadlines until the end of June, I decided to take an offline week.
This might seem easy for some but when you usually check your e-mails twice a day at least five days a week, write a couple of blog posts per week, often read online blogs and magazines, and have regular online contact with people all over the world, it’s another story. It went pretty well though.
Yesterday, my laptop was finally repaired and Internet worked again. 230+ unread e-mails in my inbox.
Back to online work today.
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Gudrun
1 year ago
congrats on giving yourself time away from the computer. I think there should be a support group – “Hi, my name is Gudrun, I check my email obsessively, and update my FaceBook page all the time, and I cannot stay away from online shopping”. I am sure the group would be huge!
Sounds like your week off was relaxing
Erica Johansson
1 year ago
Gudrun, I’m sure it would!
Yes, I had a pretty relaxing week.
Have never read that many books in one week before.
nomadicmatt
1 year ago
i dont think I could give it up!!