Hey Rick,
I'm no different, it stresses me out when my internet goes down because then I worry if someone needs help, especially if someone needs help with an add on product they have purchased, my goal is to be very responsive, and it makes me feel powerless if I don't know what is going on with my site. The stress is a little less if it happens on a weekend though since it is reasonable for me to have some time off. I actually went to a coffee shop yesterday morning to get online just to be able to check in on things.
I was pleased and surprised that Time Warner Cable actually sent someone out on a Sunday morning to fix it. I thought I would have to wait until Monday and would have to go to the coffee shop again today, but the guy came this morning and actually ended up replacing the line from the source post to my house. It is a buried line but I think not buried too deep because my brother was aerating the yard with a machine when it went down, and the theory is the aerator must have nicked the cable or something, it didn't cut it completely though since tv was still working though the picture quality had also dropped. In any case he ran a new cable, currently running above ground across the yard but he said he would send someone else back to bury it during the week. So now our tv picture is the best its ever been since I've lived here. We only have the very basic channels though and since historically we've never had a good picture in the upstairs rooms with cable, I've long since unplugged it from my tv and use an over the air hd antenna for local channels and just a Blu Ray player with Netflix for most of my tv and movie needs. I may have to try plugging the cable back in to see if its better now, though the antenna is working well.
Luckily we don't have internet outages that often. Working from home I was always accessing the net via wireless when I used my iphone, so I canceled my data plan with ATT quite a while back and switched from my iphone to a cheap phone since I couldn't really justify paying for the data plan when I wasn't even using it. Wish they would have let me use the iphone without a data plan but they wouldn't. Every time the internet does go down it gets me thinking about calling ATT to have them add the data plan back so I would at least have an alternate way to check email and check on my sites. If it were down for very long that is what I would end up doing.
You are right though that I do try to embrace things like that when they happen, I don't like it that I feel addicted to the internet and I think we all need a little vacation from the internet now and then. The stress of being disconnected is not so bad as long its its not a long time, and short doses of getting away from the internet I think are good for us.
I've been teaching myself piano lately and yesterday I did a lot more practicing since I couldn't get online and Netflix wasn't happening. I'm much better on guitar but I'm really enjoying learning the piano these days, working on site reading and learning to play some Bach pieces. My goal is to learn some Scott Joplin stuff like Maple Leaf Rag and The Entertainer once I get past the beginner stage. Piano music is good stuff to listen to when I'm developing too, if I'm working on something complicated music with lyrics can be distracting.
Cheers,
Joe