Unplugged

It’s simply astonishing how reliant we have become on technology and communications. Years ago when mobile phones first came out I didn’t have the need to have one and a telephone line was sufficient – if I wasn’t available, leave a message.

The Internet was fun and interesting, and a trip to the internet café every now and again was enough to soothe the cravings for information on just about everything imaginable and sometimes unimaginable!

Today, I can’t leave the house without my mobile. What if I get stuck on the side of the road? What if there is an emergency where I’m needed?

The Internet is now the digital lifeline between work, friends and family. I obsessively check email, respond to work queries, pop onto Facebook almost daily.

That said, I’ve been incommunicado since the 24 December 2007 – with my mobile the only mechanism to briefly check emails, send work through or respond to queries – a rather expensive way of being in touch and my monthly mobile bill is running close to R800.

Damn thieves stole the copper cables down by the weir in the village, which was really a crappy Christmas present and a bleak new year if lines were not immediately restored. Additionally, a friend in Scotland needed to email me new flight details when he landed in South Africa – it just caused major panic.

My livelihood depends on communications to get things done. I am a technology-reliant home office freelance writer and this had a tremendous impact on my writing business.

Research, interviews and general communications has become an absolute nightmare as I rush between friends’ telephone lines and internet cafes to get the work done.  I am basically chasing my own tail, missing deadlines and providing substandard copy.

Somehow I have survived thus far but the pace has been incredibly slow and it had a massive impact on my business at a time were things were just starting to pick up - one year later which is the time it takes to set up a sustainable business.

Telkom (our only fixed line service provider at the moment) commissioned a contractor to dig trenches to bury the copper lines down our road for a month now, and I was briefly online but got disconnected again because the contractors got the lines all mixed up, which means I was surfing on someone else’s bill :)

I’ve investigated DSL and now need to get a modem and then I’ll be styling.

Things can only look up. I was about ready to give up this month. The publication that I write for commissioned me two stories that were simply impossible or unfeasible to complete, which was subsequently dropped, and meant that a large part of my monthly income is now missing. It really started to feel that I am peeing against the wind.

Thankfully more work has come in that does not require a lot of online research and hopefully my communication problems will get ironed out soon, or else I’ll have to move my business back to Johannesburg – the opposite of my intensions just over a year ago.