Twelve weeks, for an adult, seems like it is not a lot of time, until you begin to think about it: Roughly a
semester. An approximate
fiscal yardstick too short to determine a
trend. A quarter of a year. A single
season in a single trip around the sun. Enough time to train a soldier to kill, but not enough time to teach him to think.
Twelve weeks is a trimester in the gestation of the human being. It takes three months to make an average movie of the week for NBC, CBS, or ABC. Ninety days is the sort of jail sentence one gets for drunk driving, unless one has spent the same amount of time in a rehab center previous to the offense. It's a period of time so...uncertain...in so many ways that we often ask for more time while we consider its implications.
Twelve weeks, however, is more than enough hours, minutes, and seconds to become addicted to heroin, crack cocaine, opium, and Everything2.
I discovered this last night when my borrowed computer's screen flashed an ominous 403 alert. Warning. Indication. Whatever they call it. A combination of phosphorescent ones and zeros that speaks volumes to computer-savvy users, but which meant only one thing to me: I did not have permission to search the E2 index, which is something I never knew I was doing in the first place. I could not log on. I immediately thought it was something I had done and sent pitiful emails to people here that I thought could help. Little did I know that they too would soon suffer E2 withdrawal.
The site was down for repairs, nate reported today, and I was physically aching for my fix, no less, I was sure, than a not-particularly proficient heroin addict. I had a litany of things I wanted to accomplish while I had those quiet morning hours to myself. It wasn't fair. I was blind with frustration. I tried to log on a dozen times; I searched google, hoping to sneak in that way. The cached pages that popped up with names I've known for twelve short weeks tormented me.
I realized: these were friends now, and I missed them. New good kind dependable friends, as sure as my motorcycle buddies, steady as my work partners who've fought the wars with me.
I forced myself to bed. No writeup. No editing. No nukes. No laughs. No epiphanies.
No Everything2 for the first night in 92 consecutive nights.
And when I awoke this morning and got my coffee and went through the familiar motions of virtually crossing the country, enduring great trepidation as time seemed to stand still while the hard disk whirred; when the home page loaded and the date was correct in its ofttimes snotty Greenwich way, I was happy.
I am an Everything2 Addict. And so, I hope, are You.