[kevstev]

Until recently, traveling outside the US meant giving up all data and essentially making my phone a useless brick I carried around for emergency purposes. And over the last 10 ish years or so, there have been varying degrees of wifi availability- at first in your hotel- for a fee- then in your hotel- then sometimes there would be hotspots at restaurants, then they were at all restaurants, and now wifi points are pretty much ubiquitous across cities in Europe and Asia. I have switched to Google Fi these days, which more or less now gives me continuous connectivity globally.

My take on it was that being completely off the grid was a bit annoying- its nice to completely detach, but literally having no idea what is going on at home, especially if you are in a non-english speaking country, its a bit disconnecting, in a somewhat bad way. All in all though, a few days in you don't even think about emails or FB or anything like that and its really freeing.

Having wifi at just the hotel was actually really nice- We went and did our stuff during the day, and at night- either before bed or freshening up for dinner- you get a quick update on whats going on in the world. You are detached but not isolated.

Wifi hotspots being ubiquitous- its kind of annoying- that constant "pull" to get an update is still always there. Instead of enjoying the view of the piazza, you are checking FB, quelling anxiety about what emails might be there (however silly that is), etc...

And tbh- I actually have a preference for places without ubiquitious connectivity these days. The demands of work are ever increasing- its really nice to have that hard switch to say no I am not available, its not possible for me to be available and not feel apologetic over it. I am literally off the grid- it really lifts a lot of that burden and anxiety off me anyway.