What Are You Taking For Granted?

It's Friday. I'm frazzled. Pulling out my hair. Gnashing my teeth.
I'm on vacation.
Doesn't make sense, right?
Well, I'm on vacation. With no internet.
Okay, technically, we have internet. DIAL-UP.
I logged on 30 minutes ago. I am just now able to access the 'New Post' page.
30 minutes!!
Yes, there is something wrong with this connection. It's never been this excruciatingly painfully retardedly slow before.
In the meantime, I have blog commitments, interviews and the like, that I'm not able to proceed with. It's taking too long. I'm not getting through to the pages I need. I can't even access Facebook!
So I am a little freaked.
However, here I am, finally writing a blog post, and I'm wondering what the heck we all did before high speed internet. No, scratch that. What did we do before there WAS internet?
Were our lives interesting? Did we still have friends? Maybe ten instead of a thousand? But did we actually talk to those friends? On the phone or - gasp - in person?!
They say the internet has simplified our lives. With the simple click of a button, you can order books, music, movies, do your banking, shop for snazzy shoes, you can even do your grocery shopping online and have it delivered.
You never have to leave the house!!!
Normally, I'd be the main cheerleader on that one. But my little freak out today, feeling completely disconnected from the outside world and just knowing I"m missing out on a hundred and one things that are going to change my life and be vital to my career, has got me thinking.
Who do I think I am?
No, really.
I mean seriously, has anybody really noticed I haven't tweeted anything since Tuesday?
Does anyone care that much about my lack of Facebook updates? Are my book sales dropping due to my disappearance from social networking? Hey they can't get that much lower anyway...maybe a mysterious disappearance might spark some chat about me and my book and actually drive UP sales...hmm.
Anyway...
I take all this for granted. I love social networking. I love knowing I can connect with all of you, friends, fans, fellow readers and writers, whenever I want. I can hop onto your blogs and Facebook pages and see what you're up to. We can share a laugh over Twitter.
The world is a quiet place when that's gone.
But the silence points me toward other things. Things like sitting alone, staring at the sun setting over a still lake.
Thanking God for all the blessings in my life.
Taking time to talk, be with my family. Play with the dog.
Do I feel guilty? Yeah. Do I feel like I'm failing, missing out on some major stuff that I should be a part of? Probably. The truth is, I'm probably not.
It's just all become so much a part of me, that I'm not sure how to react when I'm faced with the blank white page and spinning circle that just goes around and around, taking me nowhere.
I've come to depend on all this stuff so much that I'm not sure, no, I don't know, how to live without it.
This is not good.
Is it?
So, while I try to survive the next few weeks, I'm going to do my best to focus on other things. I can't change the fact that it takes a half an hour to load a page. I can change how I feel about it. What I say, what I do. What I will spend my time on instead.
Maybe there are other things in life that I take for granted. Maybe I better go figure out what those are and enjoy them.
Because you never know what tomorrow will bring.
What are you taking for granted?