A little music to accompany this post…
Clear Waters Music: Clear Waters by Kevin MacLeod
We just returned from a family vacation in Lake George. I purposely did not bring the laptop, iPod touch, or any other gadget. I considered not bringing the cellphone, but it does prove helpful on occasion. A week without email, Google Reader, or any other always-connected medium. It was AWESOME. I’ll be the first to admit I have some of the affliction I call connection-addiction. This means I regularly have to check my aggregator to see what has happened recently, or keep up with who is saying what. And I don’t even have a Facebook or Twitter account. My daily routine ends up being checking/reading/responding/writing in a constant stream, sometimes to a fault.
So, without the connections, what did I do? With my family, I…
- Read books (the old-school hardcover kind)
- Swam in the pool
- Swam in the lake
- Made fires in the firepit
- Went to an amusement park
- Rode a steamboat
- Went for a hike
- Went for a drive
- Slept in
I thought I might have withdrawl symptoms from being disconnected, but you know what? None. Zippo. Nein. It was relaxing and fun to stop the daily madness and unwind. When we returned, I took a little time to look through all the emails, etc. 95% could be deleted, ignored, or marked as read. Granted, it’s still summer break, so it’s easier to ignore things.
It’s amazing what being disconnected feels like. I think I might make it a more frequent habit to maintain some balance. This might be more fuel to my personal decision to not Facebook or Twitter…