I have a great job and love what I do. Often I find myself thinking, “I get paid for doing what I love.” But I realized the other day just how hard it has become to stop working and to “unplug.” With this comes a possibly greater realization of unplugging from all types of demands on my attention. By this, I refer to today’s technological connectivity gadgets – cell phones, including calls and text messaging; e-mail; IM; Twitter; Facebook and countless others.
I used to observe others with their eyes and thumbs stuck to their Blackberry devices only reminding myself that that I wasn’t like that – thank goodness. However, now I check my Blackberry at every opportunity; riding the elevator, before and after eating a meal, waiting in line, before and after driving, etc. What has happened? Is it because with this mobile device, I have access to all of my work communication modes and the various Social Media outlets that seem to be demanding more attention? Further disturbing is since “thumbing” a message or Tweet or Facebook comment on a device is inherently time consuming, what has the depth of my communication become? Short messages that are sometimes conveyed in the 3rd person! I’m trying to respond to client issues as timely as possible and keeping up with my friends’ and families’ lives and let them in on mine. But, I’m realizing the depth of my communication and attention are getting seemingly shallower.
My wife and I took a last minute camping trip one weekend last fall. My boss took my “on-call” time and graciously let me go. As we got farther and farther into the wilderness and the attention demands listed above started melting away and the sights, smells and sounds of the forest started enveloping me, I realized I had gone nearly 3 hours without looking at my Blackberry. It felt so nice to finally be unplugged and to be thinking about how I was going to practice lighting our camp-fire in some primitive method even though we had matches, how we were going to cook our meals by that fire even though we had a camp stove, and how we would be testing a new wool blanket for sleeping in rather than using a sleeping bag.
Then it hit hard: I forgot to pass on important information to my boss about a client with an Internet outage and the ETA on its resolution that only I knew about and the client was patiently awaiting. I grabbed my Blackberry and discovered with a knot in my stomach there was no signal. Now it became instantly clear why it had been so easy to unplug: it was forced on me by the lack of cellular coverage. I had two realizations – the unresolved client issue and my own inability to voluntarily unplug. The second was ultimately more saddening than the first. But, in order to at least relieve the stress about my client, I raced around the camp trying to get to higher ground where my phone might pick-up a signal. “At last!” I thought. I found a spot by standing on the running board of my car and banged out a quick email to my boss with the pertinent details, waited until it went through, and made my way back to camp utterly relieved and instantly feeling OK about being unplugged again. This time I shut the phone off voluntarily, took some ribbing from my wife about the situation and got to work on starting that fire.
Note to self: Don’t look at your Blackberry, no matter the signal strength, until Tuesday morning when it will be time to upload our scary camping photos