Post mortem: two months, no Internet (at home)

So we did it. We turned off our Internet November 1 and survived, unplugged, until January 1.

But... by late December, the honeymoon of living offline at home was over.

Yes: our space was cleaner. Yes: we felt pretty righteous, unplugging and all.

Some of our friends were in awe. Others knew it would be a short-lived experiment.

Admittedly, once back online, we were pretty happy to be in the swing of things. Though now we're not so sure... J is already talking about going offline again. Permanently.

Below, the pros and cons of unplugging at home.

Pros

Early to bed. Less distractions = more sleep.
The novelty factor. The web gets more interesting when you're not on it all the time.
Quality time at the cafe. Doing all your online business at a cafe is really nice...
Everything runs more smoothly. The web at home is a great interrupter.
A better ISP. It gave us an excuse to switch from a bad ISP to better ISP.

Cons

Missed messages. We missed some time-sensitive emails.
Banking gets complicated. Number one inconvenience, hands down: no online banking.
Difficulty finding information. Boy... the yellow pages in Montreal really do suck.
Trouble getting things done. It gets a little more complicated to do some simple things.

Over all, I'm conflicted. Did we have a better quality of life without the web? That's debatable.

My solution: Stay online at home. But also stay aware of time-sucking behaviours. Know when we're just checking email obsessively, and when we're going online to make life more fun, more efficient or more interesting.