I Was Partially Turned Off from My Tech for Four Days and This Is What Happened

It’s been a long year.

A long, winding year.

Last year this time, I was writing about my Sabbatical year in agro-tech digital marketing and how I was slowly coming back to the digital world, excited and happy and perhaps a little too scared.

Since then, I left the digital marketing realm one more time for a whole nine months (enough to give birth to a whole new me!), and then came back to it, like the prodigal daughter I have frequently been throughout my life.

It’s been one month now since I finally returned to my digital mothership again, equally excited as I was last time, but with the lessons of the last two year now fully embedded in my DNA.

In a nutshell, I learned that I love what I do. I learned that you can go back and forth and still love what you do. You can be disappointed in everyone around you (yourself included), and still come back. You can fail hard at what you love most precisely because you are too attached.

Ultimately, I learned that, Sweet Lord Jesus on a Stick, planning, and organization is everything.

That being said (sad) and rewind, I am about 12 hours away from going into a partial internet blackout for the next four days. I will have limited access to the Internet as I am going into a wooded area where even phone signal is impossible. Funny enough, Nokia 3310 will work just fine there.

I will have access to my laptop and document this journey as I desperately try to self-discover and fully rewind the last year in a whole lot of four days. I will continue to use my laptop and my phone, I will continue to write, but I will try to do this offline and see where it goes (and how it goes, more specifically). Last time I did this (without knowing I was going into an area of complete internetlessness) it was pretty much a disaster that eventually led to me walking for a few kilometers to reach that one point where I could send a text message on Slack.

This time, though, I am fully prepared. Or so I think.

I have my laptop, I have saved the articles I want to research, I have music on my laptop, I have downloaded Netflix stuff, we have Rummy and Monopoly Deal, a wireless speaker, and three books (A Man Called Ove and On Love and Other Demons for me and A Song of Ice and Fire for my fiance).

As you can see, I am obviously under the impression that I can do a lot of things in four days and still sleep tightly, something I haven’t fully done since 2012.

That is not even an exaggeration. I haven’t slept since 2012.

Day One

It’s 4:30 am and I have slept for a whole, glorious 2 minutes (fell asleep in front of my laptop for a brief moment in time and space).

About seven hours from now, I will go into blackout.

Our luggage is, as per tradition, not even close to being fully ready, but I’m picking up half-wet stuff off the drying line and shoving them into what seems to be the backpack in which I have stuffed my entire adult life and three of my childhood dreams.

Just for reference, this is how it all looks at the ungodly hour of 5 in the morning.

OK, we’re out. We have to stop about halfway through to buy a reasonable number of 48 beers (for three people to share over four days), soap, and a toothbrush since I forgot mine at home (also per tradition).

Calling our nice host while on the road, as she indicated I should do. It’s our second time here and she probably remembers us as the three weirdos who drank 56 beers and played about 129 rounds of Rummy last time we went there.

Again, not an exaggeration.

She and her husband are lovely — they are not the kind of nice hosts that will constantly kiss your *ahem* rear. Instead, they are normal-folk polite, they share stories with you, they welcome you nicely, they ask about your life in a retained and very natural way. Plus he is the biggest jokester ever.

For instance, last time we were there, I was wearing a T-shirt with a cat on the breastal area. After politely asking for my fiance’s permission to make a joke, he innocently asked if he can pet the kitty.

For all those who think this is sexual harassment, it isn’t. It’s just old-school humor coming from a man who was saying this with the tone of an excited 12-year-old who has just discovered his toy car can be pimped using his mother’s nail polish.

So, we’re on the road, and my phone magically turns off (not so magical, I didn’t charge it). Great, so my blackout will start sooner than I thought. Oh well, I pull my Marquez and start reading in my backseat.

About 15 minutes away from our destination, all phones lose signal. We know the way, so no problem.

We get there, we are greeted and pointed out to our rooms, nothing has changed. The same lovely backyard river, the same people, the same dog, everything is flawlessly the same.

I get to our room and pull the charger out of the bag to give my phone some juice. Not that I will use it any other way than shooting some random photos.

And there it is.

Internet signal.

No phone signal, but a strong WiFi signal in the middle of the woods.

OK, so things aren’t flawlessly the same. They now have internet.

And so goes my plan of staying off for four days.

And the whole point of this article.

OK, let’s divert it a little.

Let’s see how much I can stay offline given the circumstances.

Day One went out pretty smoothly. Touched my phone a couple of times. mostly for the camera and accidentally refreshing my Facebook feed one or two times.

In total, I read 50 pages from my Marquez book and 10 pages from Ove.

The surroundings? Idyllic (see below).

Food was excellent. Managed to only shoot one photo because I went into a food deliciousness coma afterward (stuff was too good to stop and shoot photos of it).

Day Two

Had a weird sleep. On the one hand, I slept like a baby. A snorring, half-drunk, drooling baby, but a baby. On the other hand, I felt like rising from the coffin in the morning, with some weird back ache bugging me for the next 5 hours.

Had breakfast. Romanian stuff, mostly, all good.

Spent the remainder of the day writing some, reading about 10 pages, and (not so graciously) losing at Rummy.

Scrolled Facebook a few times, even sent some messages to some people.

Amazing dinner, a Romanian type of soup with homemade bread. Didn’t take photos, except for the fish (fresh trout caught from the backyard river stream)

Day Three

We get our breakfast. Same as yesterday, some slanina, some salad, cheese, homemade bread, homemade jam, butter, fresh milk, etc.

We decide to visit a monastery in the area. Our friend feels a bit odd, but he starts feeling a bit better as we approach the destination.

We get there. I am a bit weirded out by horoscope signs painted on the ceiling of the wooden church (built in the 18th century), but learn that the church (including the painting) has been renovated. I also see our beloved Patriarch Daniel (the Head of the Romanain Orthodox Church, a money-avid guy) painted in the church.

Okay. Not religious at all, so I couldn’t care much, but it kind of ruins the vibe of the entire place if you ask me. It doesn’t help that the place has like a billion shops. I buy a “traditional” (read: made in China using traditional Romanian patterns) headscarf. Ten minutes later I realize I will probably not wear it. Ever.

We get in the car.

We get to our cabin.

I walk to a remote point to get some phone signal and wish my mom Happy Birthday. I eventually manage to get said phone signal from Ukraine (!!!), I call my mom, and, as always, I ask her how she feels at 23. She laughs, we laugh, all good.

I return to our cabin and spend the evening napping.

We wake up. Our friend feels a bit weird.

We have dinner.

Our friend rushes from the table.

Twenty minutes later, my fiance shows the same symptoms.

OK, clearly, they had something to eat that wasn’t that great. I feel nothing, so I must be good.

I tend to my fiance all night, tea, talks, and all. We go out for a cigarette.

I rush back in and shove my head in the toilet.

I decide this was it for me, so I return to my sleep. Next morning, the episode plays on repeat. The guys aren’t feeling that great either.

To top it off, we are all cut off electricity. I guess I will be spending some time off tech then! The one thing we probably did not realize is that this being a remote area, no electricity means no water pump — ergo, no water.

That’s one fun thing not to have when you are food poisoned, indeed.

Because you know what the alternative is? An outdoor toilet.

And you know what that smells like?

You probably don’t want to know. Some details of that trip are still fuzzy to me and I prefer to leave them this way — for the sake of the scenery if nothing else.

We decide to leave for home as soon as the owner of the cabin comes back from her village shopping spree. She agrees to us leaving, she even drops the price for the rooms and she doesn't charge us for our last two meals there (the breakfast and the dinner). I think they feel kind of guilty, which makes me at least feel guilty for their guilt and keeps making me find excuses for whatever demon bug entered that food and ruined the only week of peace and quiet I had all year.

That pretty much sums up my yearly vacation of 2019. To recap:

1. I read about 15% of what I wanted to read.
2. I did my work.
3. I was on the Internet.
4. Also spent an equal amount of time with my head in the toilet.
5. I spent some time offline as well, mostly when I needed electricity the most.
6. Had more mint tea for my upset tummy than I had in 20 years since I last had enterocolitis and my dad carried me to the doctor for butt shots because I hadn’t eaten anything in a week and I couldn’t walk.

Would I recommend the place?

It is really pretty.

And last time we visited, nothing bad happened. Aside from me losing while playing all board games in the world, but that’s not unusual.

Is there any chance we caught this on the road, rather than there?

We didn’t eat anything in common until we got there. Our suspicion is pointed towards the soup we had on Day 2, but you can’t be sure.

It is quite cheap. And a great starting point if you want to visit attractions in the area (not sure that monastery thing is what I would recommend, but it seems pretty popular with tourists — Romanians and foreigners alike).

Where to next year?

Not sure, but I will definitely check that they respect basic hygiene and stuff. Let me make this clear: I am not sensitive, I have eaten in places that are far less hygienic (ashamed to admit, but throughout the years, my own house might have been very far off the Gordon Ramsay-approved state of cleanliness).

But somehow, I want to make sure my next vacation isn’t cut short by multiple trips to hug-the-toilet-seat-sessions.

It’s not that projectile vomiting isn’t fun and all, but I’d rather not.

Other than that? Still reading those books. And those first two days, I felt pretty much in Heaven (especially with the Internet connection and not having to travel back 20 kilometers on country roads to upload my stuff online).

Did I find myself?

Not at all. Not one single bit.

Which proves what I was more or less assuming all along. You don’t need initiation routes through the middle of nowhere to find yourself. You are there all along. All you have to do is internalize whatever it is that life threw at you, and move on with all that extra baggage on your back.

I didn’t find myself on the road at 5 am, and I didn’t find myself when I was having deep discussions with a waterless toilet.

I found myself through 2018 and 2019, in the worst moments of the last couple of years. When I screwed up badly, when I changed routes, when I decided it’s time to come back and had the internal power to pick myself up from the puddle of tears and anger and move on.

I found and lost myself a billion times, like that thing we all do when we search for the keys and the keys are in our pocket.

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