Sorry for the light posting here recently. I'm in the midst of a vacation trek through Italy, and it's been surprisingly difficult to get online. The bulk of my trip so far has been an 8 day bike trip through Tuscany, and while many of the hotels we've stayed at claim to offer wifi, that's about as genuine as their offer of air conditioning, which is to say a complete lie. I did want to come here to get off the grid, but perhaps not so literally.

I have not experienced the information withdrawal shakes, though I have been nervous about stumbling upon Game of Thrones spoilers since I can't watch the last two episodes over here (Twitter is the worst offender on the spoiler front, so I've been especially wary of checking it, even though I'm on it all the time at home). The mental serenity of stepping out from under the information waterfall has lowered my stress. Living here feels healthier.

And yet I'm not sure I'd want to go back to a world of such slow or unreliable internet access. I miss the mental stimulation of being plugged in, as wearying as it can be. Being without internet access can feel like being Tony Stark without his Iron Man suit. Having an internet-connected smartphone is a modern superpower, but having one that isn't, one that's just a plain old phone, must feel like being Spiderman in the countryside, without tall buildings to swing from. Maybe he just hops a ride in an Uber or rents a car for those situations.

And I miss writing, if for no other reason than to organize my thinking (I lost my power adaptor the first week in Italy, and I've yet to track down another, so for a couple days my laptop was just dead). I need to find a better way to combine the healthy, active life here with the sedentary but mentally stimulating life back home.

One of my biking buddies loaned me his power adaptor for the rest of my trip here, so I'm back in business, in a way. I was scanning through my blog draft folder and realized I have over 2,000 unpublished, unfinished posts! When I'm not out seeking out gelato or sightseeing under the Italian sun, I'm going to try to clear some of those out.

Ciao!