Eight days without WiFi

As I wrote about earlier, Cuba offered os many things. One thing that Cuba didn’t offer was WiFi. The country simply doesn’t have WiFi, Internet or phone service. WiFi can only be used in very, very few hotels around the island. We managed to get online almost every day for 30 minutes because I had to work, and this might have been the worse thing about the trip to Cuba – the daily stress of being forced to find a way for me to get online in order to work – which I had to.

The funny thing is that the last time I was without internet for more than about a day was last summer. I was with my parents sailing around a little island between Denmark and Germany. I was about to go crazy the first day and a half and I constantly grabbed my phone trying to refresh my Instagram and Facebook feed, but it didn’t work. After that day and a half I came to think about, why it really means so much to me to constantly be updated on what the bloggers I follow on Instagram are doing, why do I care so much? Those thoughts made me realize that I, of course, would be fine without internet for some time, and that I didn’t have to kill my parents for taking me to a god forsaken place without internet.

Then in Cuba it wasn’t that hard to be without Instagram and Facebook, it seemed like I’d learned my lesson last summer, even though I must admit that I am pretty addicted to my iPhone and its internet…

Well, after I got home from Cuba and was back on track with internet again, I got to think about all the time I spend or waste, some would say, every day surfing the Internet. It was quite scary to say the least- when we arrived to Miami and finally had internet again, I was online for three and a half hours straight, sitting up till the middle of the night updating myself on everything I’d missed in those eight days without. When I wanted to go to sleep at 3 am, I tried to, but I was constantly reminded of something else I needed to read, something to check, a message to write, a mail to read… This really made me think how much stress the online world causes and how much of my sleep it steals at times. We (well, I, I can at least talk for myself) are slaves of technology.

The lack of internet in Cuba had me reading three books, or more like, swallow three books, and I remembered how much I used to read and how much I enjoy it. The internet simply steals me away from reading, and it is such a shame. Therefore I made some changes (small ones – baby steps here…) when I got back to Berlin:

♥ I unfollowed a big amount of people on Instagram and Bloglovin. That way I won’t spend that much time forcing myself to check Instagram every other minute, because there won’t be that much to check and the same with Bloglovin.

♥ I started thinking more about what I consume online. Do I really need to read all of Buzzfeeds articles? I will think more about what I consume and be more intentional with it. There are so many articles, blogs, videos and other stuff out there, it doesn’t matter if I don’t read all of it, I don’t need it, and I don’t have to fear if I am missing out on something, because I am not.

♥ Put the laptop and phone away before bedtime and read a book, because I love it. Still struggling on this one, but I am trying.

What are your opinions about this? Are you also, like me, spending more time than what is healthy being online?