I have not been feeling well for the past 2 days and I immediately knew why. I was experiencing “Discomgoogolation“. Is there such a word? Well the internet says, it is the extreme stress and anxiety for not being able to access online.
Though not yet officially recognized, it is a clinical disorder and researchers say that it can affect a person emotionally as well as physically. Affected individuals have increased blood pressure and brain activity.
Just to give you an idea, the stress of being offline is comparable to the feeling you get when you’re about to take an important exam, when you’re late to an important meeting, or when fired from your job. Now, that’s some heavy stressing.
You see, my internet connection was interrupted last Wednesday morning. At first I thought it was only temporary, but by midday without the internet back, I got alarmed. I got more troubled when the support tech that I called informed me that I was their only subscriber in the area who is experiencing problems. I still reserved hope that by the time I get home from my work shift at 10:00 pm, I’ll have my connection back. That hope became hopeless when I arrived to learn that 12 hours has passed and I still have no internet. Why? I have neighbors who are using the same provider but they were online. By this time, I’ve had 3 phone calls already to my ISP requesting for support. Rather than keep on thinking about my frustration, I went to sleep thinking that I’ll be up by the time I wake up.
Fast forward 6 hours later, at 4:00 am Thursday, I woke up to a still internet-less PC. Thus my call # 4 to my provider. Never mind I thought, I have an early work shift schedule today and surely by the time I’m back home at 1:00 pm, my connection will be back. Boy, how wrong was I. My “knight in shining armor” the on site technical support arrived at 5:00 pm, did troubleshooting for an hour before telling me the grim news that it would have to be settled the next day.
Day 3, by this time I was already nearing 48 hours without internet. My “saviour”, field engineer Marc arrived at around 10:00 am and after an hour of line testing using my PC and his laptop, we decided to give replacing my router/modem a try. But then, he didn’t bring any with him so it means that he has to leave and just instruct their contractor to visit me after lunch time. Aargh! Suddenly, our TV is my favorite appliance again.
By 12:00 noon, I was surprised that tech Marc came back bringing himself the much needed replacement router/modem and just as we suspected, I was finally back online! Thanks to my “doctors”, officer Gener who was in constant communication with me to make sure that my concern was being attended, tech Milo for the first visit and of course tech Marc for the extra effort of going back to my place right away.
So, that was how I got sick for close to 50 hours. How about you? Have you been “discomgoogolated” before?