HOW DO I UNPLUG

So today I’d like to discuss unplugging. Mostly because its really fucking hard for me to do lately.

Sturdy as a brick, and just as fast.

I mean, we all remember a time when there was no internet, right? But my dad has always worked with computers and thus there were several in the house. So even when I was a wee little lass I “plugged in”. We had some sweet, sweet computer games.

There was Freddi Fish; that game was GOLD.

There were the Zoombinis, hard as fuuuuuuuck.

There was a scary ass game about fairy tales that I can’t remember the name of…but it had this troll who gave me nightmares. Yes, I was afraid of trolls before the internet, the fear never ends…

There was also Math Blaster! AW YEAH, MATH IN SPACE – THIS IS AWESOME.

Speaking of space, I played the shit out of that space pin ball game that used to come standard with the old school Microsoft OS. I think I started playing that after I was introduced to the internet though. Regardless, I spent hours and hours of time on this thing that I can never get back.

Drawing this would have been impossible.

Oh and that game where you are skiing and that abominable snowman shows up and eats you…maybe this is why I’m not into snow.

[Edit]: Kauf reminded me of the name of this game! It was SKIFREE!!!

A few years later, I’d be playing those typing games at school too – you know like Mavis Beacon.

Even if I wasn’t playing games, I was experimenting with Microsoft Word. Me and my girl friend Heather were obsessed with walking and petting all the neighborhood dogs, so we deviced a plan to do so and get money out of it. DOG WALKING SERVICE. I’m not kidding, this happened. I wrote up a flyer in MS Word about our prices, pasted in some clip art and changed the font to Comic Sans (a font that I would come to hate if I saw it on any media outside of actual comic books).

Remember that little paper clip dude? He always had your back. He did get really annoying though…

These were all super fun and kept me at my dad’s computer pretty frequently.

So being “plugged in” is something that has been instilled in me long ago.

Fast forward to today – where I have a netbook and a desktop – I feel almost spoiled. Granted my netbook travels at the speed of light, if the speed of light were brutally beaten with a sledge hammer, ran over by a car and is currently in a coma, being kept alive using a ventilator. And my desktop was made in 2007…soooo 6 years ago. His memory is going in his old age, but he’s still trucking. I don’t have any of those fancy doo-hickies, like tablets or e-readers, or a computer that works… But I’m still “plugged in.”

It’s hard to unplug these days. Mostly because my classes are online, so I have to constantly be checking those and talking to my group project members. Equally difficult is the fact that my best friends are online, I mean I could just text them the whole day, but its faster to just chat them up on Steam or Skype. And lets say that I just want to sit back and relax and watch a movie – OH WAIT, NETFLIX IS ONLINE TOO.

Do you see where I’m going with this? Unplugging is hard to do.

The only time I’m truly unplugged is if I’m reading a book, which is usually when I’m studying at Barnes and Noble or doing it for fun before bed.

I remember I used to be unplugged way more often, but that was during my first bachelor’s degree, when all the people I loved were walking distance from me. And if they weren’t walking distance, they were just a short drive away. Hanging out then was much easier to do without “plugging in.”

But even then…I would go back to my dorm and hop on my computer, log into Guild Wars…

I think unplugging is nearly impossible now.