Missed Connection Objection: From Wi-fi to Wifey

Imagine getting fired for checking your personal email seventy-five times a day.  One minute, you're on the partner track at your law firm, and the next you're chucking your laptop into the East River.  Well, that's what happens to Evie Rosen in Elyssa Friedland's novel Love and Miss Communication.  In addition to being ousted from her office, Evie makes an unpleasant discovery.  She learns that her commitment-phobe ex-boyfriend is married just six months after their breakup, a factoid she stumbles upon while on Facebook.  Evie is so traumatized by the havoc that social networking has wreaked on her professional and personal life that she vows to quit the Internet for a year.  Yet no Internet means no Monster, which makes finding a new job nearly impossible.  Luckily, Evie lands a temp gig as in-house counsel at the private high school where her best friend teaches.  Although grateful to have the work (and to be able to wear open-toed shoes!), Evie is just as uninspired as she was at her law firm, causing her to wonder if she's making the same mistake twice.  What's more, she's bitter about being single, and her friends, all of whom are married and have problems of their own, are beginning to lose patience with her.  But then her beloved grandmother Bette gets breast cancer, and she's forced to count her blessings.  Also, to become acquainted with the handsome surgeon devoted to Bette's care.  Unable to indulge her habit of Googling every man she meets (and no, that's not a euphemism), she has no choice but to get to know him the old fashioned way: by talking.  And she's surprised to find that she likes it.

"It was refreshing to learn something new about him directly -- a fact he chose to share, not something she discovered through covert research.  It was so much more satisfying watching his story unfurl like a blooming onion than to crack him open like a pinata." (231)

Fun, right?  I don't know about you, but I always appreciate a little Outback imagery.

Still, despite her progress, Evie finds that going off the grid has its cons.  Living the Luddite life means that she's out of the loop when it comes to her friends' get-togethers and major moments, threatening her already shaky relationships.  Also, she avoids using the Internet at work, instead getting a student to go online for her, a situation that blows up big time.  Nevertheless, being offline -- not to mention away from the corporate law rat race -- forces her to slow down and examine what she really wants, even if it's not what she expected. 

Love and Miss Communication is a joy to read because Friedland is a clever writer.  If I can get inside a character's head and come out feeling like I know her, then I count that book as worthwhile.  And if the book also has colorful descriptions and/or makes me laugh?  Well, there's not much more I can ask for.  Love and Miss Communication checks all those boxes.

Now, on to the important question.  Do I think it's a good idea to quit the Internet?  And more to the point, could I, like Evie, live sans Internet for a year?  Um, that would be a no.  Like TV, credit cards, carbs, and other polarizing things, the Internet's all in how you use it and is not in and of itself evil.  I, for one, am not about to renounce "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel," my Discover cashback bonus points, or cinnamon raisin bread for an existence of silent nights eating kale while wearing last year's cold shoulder muumuu.  And that goes double for the World Wide Web.  Sure, I could probably wean myself off of Pinterest.  And Etsy wouldn't be a problem because, due to the quarantine, The Tote Trove is currently closed.  But going without this blog is a nonstarter.  There's something satisfying about publishing my thoughts each week, even if only a handful of people read them.  Even if nobody reads them.  I guess it's like that whole if a tree falls in a forest and there's no one there to hear it, does it still make a sound thing.

I'm saying yes, it makes a sound.  For better or for worse, my sounds are my words.  Even if they fall with the whisper of a sapling instead of the thud of a redwood. 

Now, if only spam would stop being a ham like it's open mike night at The Inbox.