I think it’s true that we often don’t properly appreciate things until we’re forced to do without them – but sometimes the enforced break is worth it.
Most of us are old enough to remember when we couldn’t get in touch with people, or be reached by them, 24/7. Some people didn’t have answering machines or voicemail, and if you called them while they were already on the phone with someone else, you’d get a busy signal. (Do kids today even know what that sounds like?) “Car phones” were something special for rich people. Pagers were for doctors and meant for emergency use.
These days, we’re rarely out of touch. We cart our wireless-enabled laptops and “smart” cellphones everywhere we go, and contact family, friends, and the online world on any little whim at any time; and when for some reason we can’t do that, we get very nervous that we might miss something important. Mir Kamin recently wrote about that in a post about panic, parenting, and a misplaced cellphone.
I had assumed the orthodontist’s office—which is outfitted with video games, books, magazines, a beverage station, and quite possibly a private spa (maybe we only gain access to that after he gets his braces?)—would have wireless. But they didn’t. The waiting room was crammed full of parents even at 8:05 in the morning, so I found this surprising, truthfully. But that’s fine. I could make do without being able to hop online for an hour.
I’d just check my email, though. Just in case something important had come in, you understand. Thank goodness I have a cell phone that allows me to do that.
I reached into my purse. My phone was not in its usual slot. I rummaged around.
A feeling of panic overcame me.
Well, of course it turns out that my daughter had used my phone the previous evening, and according to a trusted source (He Who Tattles With Deadly Accuracy), rather than returning it to my purse afterwards, she’d left it on the end table. Obviously.
So there I was. Surrounded by giant teeth and bored parents, watching my son happily playing a Pokemon video game, wondering what in the world I could possibly do for an hour…
It would be good if I could confess, here, that the panic I felt upon discovering I was without my phone was really just me exaggerating for the sake of the story. But I can’t do that, because I was genuinely nervous to discover that I had no way to be reached. What if someone needed me? What if there was an email I needed to tend to immediately or my daughter came down with the Ebola virus at school? It could happen. And if it did, it would surely happen on the day when I was stuck listening to The Weather Channel (on a television larger than what we have at home, by the way) at the orthodontist while my cell phone sat at home.
…When it was finally all over I took him to school and returned home, only to discover that my husband had been called to pick up my daughter a few minutes earlier. (Not Ebola, no, but a garden-variety yucky virus.) You know, because they couldn’t get in touch with me.
Granted, modern communication technology is a boon to nervous parents, and most of us can identify with Mir’s anxiety at being unexpectedly unreachable – “unexpectedly” being the key point here. It’s different when we know we’ll be out of contact for a period of time, because we can expect the unexpected and make contingency arrangements in advance. Sometimes, as a recent New York Times piece by Mark Bittman notes, we may even consider choosing to be out of touch for awhile.
I TOOK a real day off this weekend: computers shut down, cellphone left in my work bag, land-line ringer off. I was fully disconnected for 24 hours.
…(M)y name is Mark, and I’m a techno-addict. But after my airplane experience, I decided to do something about it. Thus began my “secular Sabbath” — a term I found floating around on blogs — a day a week where I would be free of screens, bells and beeps. An old-fashioned day not only of rest but of relief.
Like many, though, I wondered whether breaking my habit would be entirely beneficial. I worried about the colleagues, friends, daughters, parents and so on who relied on me, the people who knew that whether I was home or away I would get back to them, if not instantly then certainly before the end of the day. What if something important was happening, something that couldn’t wait 24 hours?
On my first weekend last fall, I eagerly shut it all down on Friday night, then went to bed to read. (I chose Saturday because my rules include no television, and I had to watch the Giants on Sunday). I woke up nervous, eager for my laptop. That forbidden, I reached for the phone. No, not that either. Send a text message? No. I quickly realized that I was feeling the same way I do when the electricity goes out and, finding one appliance nonfunctional, I go immediately to the next. I was jumpy, twitchy, uneven.
I managed. I read the whole paper, without hyperlinks. I tried to let myself do nothing, which led to a long, MP3-free walk, a nap and some more reading, an actual novel. I drank herb tea (caffeine was not helpful) and stared out the window. I tried to allow myself to be less purposeful, not to care what was piling up in my personal cyberspace, and not to think about how busy I was going to be the next morning. I cooked, then went to bed, and read some more.
GRADUALLY, over this and the next couple of weekends — one of which stretched from Friday night until Monday morning, like the old days — I adapted.
But recidivism quickly followed; there were important things to do — deadlines, urgent communications. You know how it is. I called Andrea Bauer, an executive and career development coach in San Carlos, Calif. She assured me that, oddly enough, it takes work to stop working. “It takes different formats for different people, and you have to build up to it; you can’t run five miles if you’ve never run at all.”
I went back to nonwork, diligently following my rules to do less one day a week. The walks, naps and reading became routine, and all as enjoyable as they were before I had to force myself into doing them. It’s been more than six months, and while I’m hardly a new man — no one has yet called me mellow — this achievement is unlike any other in my life. And nothing bad has happened while I’ve been offline; the e-mail and phone messages, RSS feeds, are all there waiting for me when I return to them.
Even when being out of touch is intentional, it can still be stressful. One reason I asked for a laptop last Christmas is so that I might not have to be completely cut off during our family vacation in June (although in some of the places we’ll be going, wireless access may be nonexistent and it won’t matter anyway). The paradox is that at the same time, it can honestly be a relief to step away and be unplugged for awhile; it helps us remember that we weren’t always available all the time, and it really was – is – OK not to be.
But the unexpected technological glitch, even something as simple as an electrical outage, can still knock us for a loop. A short in the system knocked our servers offline at work for three hours last Wednesday, and I was truly at a point where everything I needed to do was on the computer. We have an audit to prepare for, and time is getting short, so this wasn’t something that needed to happen then – not that there’s ever a good time for it. But I handled the frustration in the healthiest way I could think of: I turned on my iPod, took an early lunch, and pulled out my book. I got a lot of reading done (the book review post will be up this Thursday), and got my boss’ approval to send my staff home if the system wasn’t back up by 2 PM. As you might guess, it was back online by 1:50, and I should mention that the remainder of the day was pretty productive – there really wasn’t any option for it not to be, to be honest.
But if I needed validation for my habit of never going anywhere without a book, I got it. You never know when you might be failed by technology and have to wait for awhile, and a book ensures that you’ll have something to do – something that’s not an idle waste of time, either – while you’re in that limbo. You might even find that you like it; I don’t think I realized how much I’ve missed having big blocks of reading time since I started spending more time online. Since there’s only so much time available in a day, there have to be tradeoffs, and I’m wondering if I should re-think some of the ones I’ve made lately. Disconnecting will be difficult, but even a partial “secular Sabbath” may not be a bad idea. It might even help me improve my coping skills the next time I’m unexpectedly offline – well, that and a book nearby.
I know what you mean about being connected. My wife and I are always sending text messages about the kids and when we’ll be home. If we forget our phones on the charger it is a big deal.
I hope you don’t mean you are closing your blog. you have a lot of good stuff. I’m always finding new sites to visit from here. Obviously, you have to do what is best for yourself. and your family.
Mike – No, I’m planning to keep this going for quite awhile, so y’all are quite stuck with me! 🙂
I keep thinking I may slow down a bit, though…we’ll see what happens with that after my Blogoversary this weekend. I’ve tried that before and it hasn’t quite worked out…
I completely understand. I get a bit of down time at work that allows me to do some blog reading without interfering with anything else. But, I should be reading books then as well.
Good to know you’ll be around a while.
I used to carry books everywhere with me, but the need to watch kids instead of read interfered.
I realized this week that I’m not far away from being able to return to that habit.
And yes, I missed a call from the school nurse a week or two ago, too. I’d run into the post office for two minutes to mail … a book. And left the phone in the car. Because, you know, no one EVER calls me.
Susan – Yeah, it’s always when I don’t bring my phone with me that someone really needs tp reach me…what’s up with that?
Mike – I can get the blog reading in during slow patches at work too. It’s the writing that eats up time – but that’s also why I keep doing this.