No electricity, no problem!

The power went out in my town recently, and I found the whole experience to be rather interesting, enlightening and cold.

When the power first went out, I did the only sensible thing I could do, which was to stare at my computer for a few minutes while I tried to figure out what was going on. Did my computer break? Was my work saved? Is this somehow my fault?

My wife and I are both currently working from home, so we were able to determine that the power went out in the house. Then we learned it was out all across the city. It was concerning to hear the power outage was so widespread, but a relief to know that I most likely would not be blamed.

At that point, I was faced with an interesting quandary.

Was I frustrated because the power outage interrupted me when I was trying to get my work done, or was I happy that not having electricity made nearly impossible to do any of my work?

If one of my employers is reading this, then please know that I quickly decided I was upset about missing my work, so I quickly called my office IT person to see if he could fix the electricity for the entire city. He suggested I turn everything off and then back on again. I also told myself that as soon as the power came back on, I would get right back to work!

At this time, I kind of liked the power being out. It was quiet and I enjoyed have nothing I needed to do. I read for a little while and thought about how nice it was to be without electricity for a while.

“This is how my ancestors lived,” I thought to myself proudly, while I went to get some water from the faucet.  “Times were simpler back then, and it must have been wonderful to not have to worry about the concerns of daily life in 2021. I could get used to this.”

And that’s when I realized I was hungry. What would we do? Should we open the refrigerator or keep it closed? How many snacks did we have? Should we start rationing food?

We have a gas stove, so my wife lit it and made us some soup for dinner. The soup was great, but it was starting to get dark while we were eating. It turns out, soup is harder to eat in the dark.

After we finished dinner, we didn’t know what to do. We couldn’t really work and we had no television or even much light for reading books. Luckily, we had each other and our phones. We looked up information about the power outage and then I quickly got distracted by the online celebrity gossip, along with news about upcoming movies.

While wondering how the Kardashians would react to a power outage, I noticed that it had gotten very dark inside. We had lit a few candles, but they did not give out much light. That’s when my wife had a brilliant idea and brought in the little solar lights that we have beside the sidewalk outside.

We pulled them up from the ground, put them in some old vases and cups, and then lit up different parts of the house with them.

I was very proud of us and thought about how easily we were adapting to the lack of electricity. It had been a nice, quiet evening, and the power outage was a somewhat relaxing break from the pressures of the outside world. I could feel the tension easing away from body as my brain relaxed from not thinking about work and my toes went numb from the lack of heat in the house.

Yes, it was getting rather chilly, and suddenly the power outage didn’t seem so great after all. At least my ancestors had a fireplace. They had all of the luck!

Since it was already close to 9 p.m., we decided to get under the blankets and try to get warm and go to sleep. It was late!

We added a few extra blankets that my mom had made, and the bed was fairly warm.  I like sleeping in a cool room anyway, and before long we both drifted off to a relaxing night of dreaming while the sidewalk light in our bedroom cast flickering shadows on the wall.

Wrapped in four layers of blankets plus a useless top sheet, we slept very peacefully. Peacefully, that is, until all of the lights came on with the electricity at 1 a.m.!!!!!

The lights were too bright! The room was suddenly too hot!

But thankfully, the power was back on and all was right with the world again. I did not get right back to work.