without media, midnight to midnight

have you ever gone without media for 24 hours? no tv, radio, newspaper, news magazine, cell phone, phone, computer, internet, ipod.

it's an experiment students in my college do as part of their media literacy class.

if they have to try it, why shouldn't i?

past weekend i did. the scariest thought beforehand was running outside without music and interview streaming into my brain to move my legs along the rhythm of beats and words. turns out i ran longer and farther than usual. i discovered a trail i hadn't seen before. i found a different entrance to the zoo. wrapped in my thoughts of discovery, i made a mental note to look up my new path on google maps.

wait.

can't do it. didn't i still have the old paper map of dc around?

since books were allowed i shifted homework for that day to the book chapters on my to do list. since i couldn't take notes on my computer i just race-read right through all. (well as fast as digesting studies can go, it actually took a good part of the day.) only some words were left over. but i could look them up.

wait.

my favorite dictionary only exists online. no English dictionaries lives on my shelf, only a german Duden [the Merriam Webster-like authority for German language so to speak].

that one came in handy later when i picked up yet another book. this time for fun. a german book i long had wanted to read -- a Tatort [one of Germany's most famous crime series] on pages. just better because true*. i devoured it cover to cover. it even made me skip a party i had planned to go. i had to cancel.

wait.

i couldn't text my friend to cancel. she forgave me the next day, though. (luckily, i had warned her of my experiment beforehand.)

not texting at a whim was hard. not only to reaching out myself but also to react. i had received a text message from my dad. if i would have texted back, he would have probably called me. because of the time gap he uses my quick response as signal that i am awake and reachable. not this time. i answered the next day. but 100+odd letters are too short to fully explain my delay.

i sorted paper piles, hole-punched studies, handcrafted a gift, designed a survey with pen and paper, made a research list, fixed a salad and ran out of ideas what else to do. i was bored, a rare situation.

not using my cell phone (and its free weekend minutes) was even harder. no human connection except a kitchen counter conversation with a house mate. it seemed oddly intense. no media seems to render human interaction and face-to-face conversations more valuable.

but what about loved ones in the distance?

not having any way to text, e-mail, call, chat or video chat with j. was the hardest. weekend time means catching up on left-overs from the busy week, no bedtime deadline to have to hang up on, no tiredness from long days.

wait.

it was soon midnight. i called him first thing breaking the media fast.

here's how students during their "day without media experiment" dealt with media abstinence.

URL: http://withoutmedia.wordpress.com/

* Verbrechen von Ferdinand von Schirach. Piper Verlag. 2009. 16.95 Euro