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But this isn’t all that they do.  Fabric wrap used at shows are made from recycled plastic soda bottles.  After the show, the wrap is recycled. 

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For more information, contact Amy Pink and ask for her Think Green presentation.

I Unplugged for 10 Days: Part 8

Below is an account of my attempt to unplug completely from email and the internet for 10 days while on a stay-cation.  For those of you who haven’t heard the term, a stay-cation is a local vacation.

The Aftermath and the First Day Back

 After Tuesday, I never got back on email or the Internet.  It felt great!  It helped that I no longer had a really good reason to get online.  I stayed busy and made a point to spend a lot of time outside. 

So how did I feel after my 10 days of unplugging?  I felt great!  On Sunday, I was actually looking forward to going back to work.  I didn’t have that dread and anxiousness that I so very often have on Sunday nights.  Surprisingly, I was actually looking forward to reading all those emails.  I was curious about what had happened while I was offline.  On Monday, when I got on my PC for the first time over 10 days, my mouse felt funny in my hand.  That seemed like a good sign. 

To combat the anticipated anxiety I thought I might feel after unplugging for 10 days and coming back to a mound of work, I purposely made a point to not schedule anything big for my first day back other than to check email and to check the 125 messages I made on my digital recorder, a device I use to remember all things work related and tasks to accomplish in my personal life.  Some people are addicted to their mobile phones and go to bed with it by their bed side.  I go to bed with my digital recorder in my hand or place it on the pillow next to me so that if I have a work related idea or task or grocery item to pick up, I just talk into the recorder instead of turning on the light and writing it down on a bedside tablet.  Perhaps I need to unplug from my digital recorder…  But it helps me sleep and keeps me sane to get ideas and tasks off my brain so that I can move on to the next matter at hand.      

I know I was extremely lucky that I could just concentrate on email and recorder work on the first day back in the office.  I realize not everyone could pull that off.  A strategy for those folks might be to publicly announce that you are back in the office the day AFTER you actually return and use that real first day to hole up in your office and catch up on email and other tasks. 

I definitely did not want to overwhelm myself and in addition to NOT scheduling a lot for myself on the first day back, I made a point not to schedule any meetings the first 2 days.  I also told my interns to not come into the office on the first 2 days.  I just needed to catch up with life and work and figure out what was up and what was down. 

Another way in which I was lucky was that I had no pressing details for any upcoming events. Those details could wait a day or two.  The 10 days I took to unplug proved to be an ideal time to unplug.  I realize this might not always work for every vacation. 

By the way, I had 439 emails and it took me only 3 hours to schlog through all of them and respond.  Most were junk since I warned clients and colleagues that I’d be out of the office.  To keep the amount of emails I received down to a bare minimum, I made a point before my unplugging to unsubscribe from lots of e-newsletters and advertisements that I regularly receive and never read. 

SO WHAT DID I LEARN?  While I didn’t succeed in unplugging for the full 10 days, I DID unplug completely for 6 days, 5 of them consecutive days.  And I pretty much DID unplug from email for 10 days since I didn’t respond to any emails and sent just one.  I realized that taking regular vacations is important (even if you just stay home and plant posies) AND unplugging WHILE on vacation is extremely important.  We need to give our brains a rest.  To read more about this, view this New York Times article on the subject. 

I also made a resolution in honor of Earth Day:  respect my weekends by unplugging from email and work related calls (unless I have an event of course!).  Our works days have gone from 8 hours a day, 5 days a week to 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and it is taking quite a toll on our health, happiness and, quite frankly, sanity.  If we just went back to the way things were before we because such a plugged in society, I think we’d all be a bit happier.   

How is unplugging on the weekends green you ask?  I’m not using electricity and I plan to use that time to spend outside in nature and being a steward to Mother Earth.  What does it have to do with sustainability?  I’m going to sustain my sanity! 

I hope this blog inspired you to try to unplug more and honor your vacations.  I’d love to hear back from you.  Feel free to share comments here or on Face Book.

Thanks for reading.

Lori

I Unplugged for 10 Days: Part 7

Dolly the Dog likes to relax, too.  

Below is an account of my attempt to unplug completely from email and the internet for 10 days while on a stay-cation.  For those of you who haven’t heard the term, a stay-cation is a local vacation.

Day 7 – Thursday, April 28

I haven’t been on email or the Internet since Tuesday. Woo hoo!  The thing I have learned from this experiment is not so much HOW I would feel about unplugging and not checking email [by the way, I still have no desire WHATSOEVER to look at email], it’s more about our need to truly honor a vacation.  As I indicated in my first post, we are too connected.  We need to unplug in order to recharge. 

Also, as someone who is always on a schedule, I’m realizing that I really enjoy NOT having a set schedule.  Sure, I had a long list of things I wanted to get done on this stay-cation, and some ARE getting done, but not all, and I’m not letting myself stress about it.  Normally, I’d stress. 

Today I was supposed to drive up to Lancaster, Pennsylvania to see my sister Lisa who is a hair stylist.  She was going to cut and color my hair.  Unfortunately, the weather forecast was calling for severe thunderstorms and threats of tornados and I would be driving right into the storm.  I didn’t want to do that, so I called her and said I’d come another time.  Honestly, it was a bit of a relief.  I still needed to do major grocery shopping for the gathering tomorrow and a round trip to PA and back, with cut and color in between, was a bit much.  Yes, that IS a problem of mine:  trying to squeeze too much into the day.  I rejoiced at knowing I was not going to feel harried.  I really hate that feeling.

So I got my shopping done and got to walk my dog Dolly at a leisurely pace and was able to greet boyfriend when he returns from his business trip with a clear conscious knowing I’ve taken care of all the big tasks.  I like this feeling.

It was nice not to rush.  So much of my life is rushing and trying to do too much in a small amount of time. I vow to not try to do this again when I get back to reality.  This stay-vacation world is NOT reality. 

The other thing I notice I’m doing while driving this week is that I let other cars go ahead of me and I let pedestrians cross the street in front of me.  Also, when I stand in line at a checkout, I let people go ahead of me.  I’m in no rush.  It is nice.  Sigh.  Is this because I’ve unplugged or is this because I’m on vacation or both? 

When I got a call from someone this week, I talked to them, but most people are doing a good job of not calling me because they know I want to unplug – and not just from email.  John and I did a bit of texting while he was out of town, but after he came back, I barely touched my phone.  Nice. 

When I told people I was going on vacation, they asked me where I was going and were hoping for my benefit that it was someplace tropical, but I didn’t really go anywhere.  I made two trips to Pennsylvania, but I mostly stayed at John’s in Takoma Park.  Unfortunately, he wasn’t there for the better part of 3 days since he was in New Orleans on business.  Some people may think that was not much of a vacation at all, but I enjoyed walking the boys to their bus stop with Dolly the Dog and meeting them at the bus stop at the end of the school day and not feel rushed.  

I’m relaxed.  Again, I ask if this is due to unplugging or from being on vacation?  I met if I were plugged in while on vacation, I wouldn’t feel this way.  When I tried to take 2 days off in March, I was on email both days for at least one hour or more.  I didn’t feel completely unplugged or relaxed or like I was on vacation. 

Next Post:  How I felt the first day back to work.  

I Unplugged for 10 Days: Part 6

 

View from John's front porch [his feet, not mine].

I Unplugged for 10 Days:  Part 6

Below is an account of my attempt to unplug completely from email and the internet for 10 days while on a stay-cation.  For those of you who haven’t heard the term, a stay-cation is a local vacation.

Day 4 – Monday, April 25

I am meeting my friend Kelly for dinner tonight at Busboys & Poets in Shirlington.  [By the way, this is a very green, veggie/vegan-friendly restaurant, so check them out!].  Since I haven’t been to this location before, I want to be sure I know how to get there, so I reluctantly get on the Internet for directions.  Since I’m already online and have blown the experiment yet again, after I get the directions, I quickly check out the site for Charlie Palmer Steak on Capitol Hill because I’m meeting Lisa DeMare, their Social Catering Sales Manager, for lunch.  [Yes, I’m officially on vacation but lunch with Lisa is fun and not work for me!]  I know where the restaurant is, but I figure I’ll read more about it.  [By the way, they had some really good vegetarian options available for me to eat, so don’t let the word “steak” in the name scare you away.  I would definitely go back again].

Late this afternoon, I get a call on my mobile from No Name Vegetarian Caterer and they inform me they can’t caterer the gathering on Friday.  Argh!  That night, I get back on the web site for Sticky Fingers Sweets & Eats and plan out a menu, run it by my boyfriend John and plan to email the owner in the morning.  There goes the experiment yet again…

Total time on the internet today:  About 20 minutes. 

Day 5 – Tuesday, April 26

I got on email this morning.  It is the first time I’ve been on since Friday morning. I went a whole 4 days without getting on email, but I don’t consider this too huge of an accomplishment since 2 of those days were over the weekend.   I didn’t want to send an email, but I figured it was the easiest way to contact Doron Peterson, owner of Sticky Fingers Sweets & Eats [and grand prize winner of Cupcake Wars on the Food Channel by the way] about the gathering on Friday.  Despite the fact that the web site CLEARLY stated I could call the main number to place my order, I email the order to Doron since I know her.  I wasn’t looking for a discount.  I just wanted her to know that I was using her company for catering. 

So I send the email and keep checking email to see if she had responded to it.  I HATE that I got on email!  I try REALLY HARD to not look at emails anybody else sent me.  I look a bit at WHO emailed me, but I don’t open any emails.  Okay, maybe one.  So I am forced to keep looking at email to see if Doron responds, but she never does.  Long story short:  I finally speak to her via mobile phone late in the afternoon.  We have a lovely chat and she says, “Just call the main number.”  So I really didn’t need to get on email at all.  Argh!  I kick myself for ruining the experiment YET AGAIN but vow NEVER TO LOOK AT EMAIL ANYMORE DURING MY STAY-CATION!!

Next post:  See how I do for the duration of the experiment. 

I Unplugged for 10 Days: Part 5

View from the end of the road my parents live on in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  

Below is an account of my attempt to unplug completely from email and the internet for 10 days while on a stay-cation.  For those of you who haven’t heard the term, a stay-cation is a local vacation.

Day 3 – Sunday, April 24

I haven’t been on email since Friday morning.  At least I have THAT going for me.  I don’t miss email at all and have no desire whatsoever to look at it.  Ever since Saturday, my phone is indicating that I have no new email, which I know is wrong.  My mobile phone does this from time to time.  No problem for me!  That makes unplugging even easier because I am not tempted to look at it.  I don’t miss my phone and have no desire to talk to anybody on the phone.  I am not experiencing withdrawal whatsoever.  I’m barely thinking about work.  I am really excited that I don’t have to work on Monday.  I am barely paying attention to what time it is and I am barely looking at my watch which is surprising because I am a compulsive watch-look-er-at-er. 

I had things I wanted to do today, like writing, but I didn’t get that done either and that’s okay because I’ve got the whole week off.  It will get done. 

Today at Easter brunch with my family in my hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, my 22 year-old nephew Alex told me about a challenge he took last semester in one of his classes at Temple University.  He and his classmates were challenged to remove mass media from their lives -- as much as possible -- for at least 24 hours. This included television, radio, phone, email, the Internet and any kind of musical source.  I barely watch TV (Castle on Mondays for 1 hour, Cougar Town on Wednesdays for 30 minutes) and disconnecting from the phone, email and Internet does not scare me; however, the thought of disconnecting from NPR makes me anxious!  The thought of no music or noise for 24 hours stresses me, too.  Because I usually am alone in my office, except when my interns are here, I like listening to the voices on NPR ALL DAY LONG.  It keeps me company.  I’m an extrovert. I get my energy from other people.  I don’t do very well in silence.  

My smart nephew was able to engage in his disconnection fairly easily because he headed to the hills (as in the mountains, not my relatives) for 3 days.  He was with a group of friends who were NOT participating in the experiment, so he was forced to listen to music during the drive.

Alex told me he enjoyed unplugging and it was very easy because he was in the mountains and the weather was nice.  He also had other things around him to do and people around him to keep him company.  Imagine that, old fashioned socialization…He commented that had he been in the city (Philadelphia), it would have been tough to unplug with so much stimulation around him. 

His challenge was when some people in his group started watching a movie, it was tough to stay away from, but he did it!  Alex also commented that by Days 2 and 3, he started experiencing withdrawal symptoms from his laptop.  He’s 22 and on Facebook regularly.  I get it.   

Alex made the observation that we socialize around mass media and when you remove yourself, you remove yourself from your community.  After the experiment, his classmates reported that they felt disconnected and could not communicate with others.  Alex felt they could not socialize without utilizing mass media.  Being asked to NOT use mass media made communicating and socializing much harder for these people. 

What is our world coming to???

Total time on the internet today:  Zero minutes!   

Check in tomorrow when I share how I did on Day 4 and my challenges of staying away from the Internet. 

I Unplugged for 10 Days: Part 4

Below is an account of my attempt to unplug completely from email and the internet for 10 days while on a stay-cation.  For those of you who haven’t heard the term, a stay-cation is a local vacation.

Day 2 – Saturday, April 23

My boyfriend John is having a gathering of family and friends on Friday and being the event producer that I am, I am helping him with the menu and other details.  I had hoped to have these details taken care of before my unplugging, but we couldn’t’ find the time to have the discussion until now. 

I try to convince him to go with Sticky Fingers Sweet & Eats, an amazing vegan bakery/restaurant [see, we ARE still talking green on this blog!] that also caters, but he wants to go with No Name Vegetarian Caterer since he has used them before.  I’m okay with this since I’m curious to see how they’ll do.  I get on the Internet to see what their menu options are.  While I don’t mind getting online (no heart palpitations whatsoever) to handle this task, I will admit that I’m a bit disappointed that once again, I’ve failed at my plan to unplug.  But this gathering is much more important than my silly experiment, so I “man up” and get online. 

John and I look at the menu for No Name Vegetarian Caterer from our respective laptops.  He is one efficient, no-nonsense kind of guy, so we quickly figure out a menu.  I send an email inquiry and specifically request No Name Vegetarian Caterer to call me on my mobile phone since I am NOT checking email!  So goes it for unplugging from phone calls…  I realize that will be impossible.  I stay away from my laptop for the duration of the day. 

I didn’t plan anything for the rest of the day.  As a planner, I like to plan out my day – even on the weekends, but today, I wanted to let whatever happen, happen.  John, his 2 young sons and I went to an egg hunt in his neighborhood.  This one family has been hosting it for nearly 20 years.  The night before, parents drop off 1 dozen candy-filled plastic (eek!) eggs per kid.  The next day, families show up at the same house for a shot gun start to the egg hunt.  The little ones go first, followed shortly thereafter by older age categories.  They have a limit of 12 eggs per kid.  The adults hang out and enjoy a pot luck brunch and chat while the kids hunt for eggs.  I help out a few neighborhood kids I know who haven’t accumulated their 12 eggs by standing in an area where I see eggs and let them know if they are getting warmer and colder.  It was great, simple fun. 

Total time on the internet today:  15 to 20 minutes.  

Next post:  See how I did on Day 4 and read about the interesting experiment my college-aged nephew engaged in that involved removing mass media from his life for 24 hours.   

I Unplugged for 10 Days: Part 3

Below is an account of my attempt to unplug completely from email and the internet for 10 days while on a stay-cation.  For those of you who haven’t heard the term, a stay-cation is a local vacation.

Day 1 of Unplugging – Friday, April 22 (Earth Day)

My official unplugging began at approximately 9:25 a.m.  I was visiting my best friend Lori (yes, we have the same first name) and checked email once last time.  Over the next 10 days, I recorded my thoughts and feelings on my digital recorder (since I was trying to unplug!) and later transcribed those comments for this blog

I am completely finished with any email I wanted to send and I feel great!  I feel like I’m in college and just finished finals.  I am REALLY looking forward to NOT looking at email and I am NOT worried about NOT looking at it.  I have taken my precautions.  I am SO looking forward to being done with email for 10 days because I am really tired and desperately want to unplug.

The challenge is that my goal is to unplug from the Internet, too.  My marketing consultant told me about an unplugging quiz that she suggested I take before and after my unplugging.  I haven’t yet had an opportunity to take the quiz yet, but I really want to.  Also, I have dinner scheduled with a friend on Monday and want to be sure I know how to get there.  I could always call my friend or the venue, but I’m sure both will send me to the web site.  I decide to worry about it later.  Perhaps I’ll quickly log on to the Internet one last time and take the quiz when I’m visiting my oldest sister Sharon today on the way home from my friend Lori’s …  But that will be the LAST time I plug in… I swear…

***

It’s now the evening of the first night.  It’s been easy not to get on email since I’ve been on the road from Pennsylvania to Maryland for a good part of the day.  The hard thing is to not look at email on my phone since I see that I’ve got emails to read.  I push the button as if I’m going to read the emails, but look away when it brings up the emails and quickly get out of email mode.  I do this because I want to keep setting the number of emails to read back to zero because at the end of the 10 days, I don’t want to see that I have 600 emails to read!  It will surely give me chest pains.  

I didn’t get a chance to take the unplugging quiz at my sister’s, and since my marketing consultant recommended I take it before and after my unplugging, I figure I better do this NOW!  So I got on the internet to take the quiz.  It didn’t make a lot of sense to me, so I won’t be taking the quiz at the end of my unplugging. Sigh.  I plugged back in on the very first day for nothing!!  Darn, darn, darn! 

Total time on the internet today:  about 20 minutes.  

I Unplugged for 10 Days: Part 2

Below is an account of my attempt to unplug completely from email and the internet for 10 days while on a stay-cation.  For those of you who haven’t heard the term, a stay-cation is a local vacation.

My Approach

I thought about unplugging from email about one week to 10 days before my official vacation.  The more I thought about unplugging, the more excited I got.  I not only wanted to make this a project that I blogged about (after the fact of course), I wanted to make this a movement!  I was REALLY serious about sticking to my decision to unplug. 

I knew I’d have to plan a bit before THE BIG UNPLUGGING occurred, so this is what I did:

The Date

Before all this crazy thinking began, months before I had booked a speaking gig in New Jersey on April 21^st, and had planned to visit my best friend Lori (yes, we have the same first name!) in the Philadelphia suburbs afterwards.  Because of this, I had already planned to take off the rest of my speaking day and the day after that which was Earth Day as well as Good Friday.  I would be watching my boyfriend John’s young sons during the middle of the following week while he was on a business trip, so I figured it would be easier to take those day’s off, too.  As a result, I just opted to take off from April 22 and not return to the office until May 1^st. 

My unplugging officially began on Friday morning April 22^nd, so my unplugging time ran over 2 weekends and I only lost 6 official work days. 

It helped that my time off was right after Easter/Passover, so I figured others might be on vacation and the demands on my time – and my email – might be a little less.  It also helped that I didn’t have an event coming up the following week. 

Other Actions

1.  I was worried that my email box would get overloaded, so I started unsubscribing to junk email I knew I would never read. 

2.  At least one week before my vacation, I alerted current clients as well as regular clients who didn’t currently have an event on the books about my vacation and plans to unplug.  Nobody was concerned and I think a few were envious.  They all supported my endeavor.    

3.  As I’m sure you suspect, I prepared an automatic out of office email and indicated that the office would be shut down for the week and that we would not be checking email until we returned.  I added that if it was a true emergency, people could call my mobile number.  Otherwise, they would have to wait until May 2^nd.  I did the same for office voice mail.   

My next post, which I'll make later today, will include a report from Day 1 of unplugging!

I Unplugged for 10 Days: Part 1

Below is an account of my attempt to unplug completely from email and the internet for 10 days while on a stay-cation. A stay-cation is a local vacation for those of you who haven’t heard the term.

Why I Did It

In the past, when I went on vacation – whether a true vacation or a stay-cation -- I still checked email and voice mail. You know what? I really resented it! This was probably because I remember a time when you took vacation, you truly unplugged because there was no other option. There was no such thing as checking email. Heck, email didn’t even exist! And you weren’t able to check your voice mail at work remotely because there wasn’t such a thing as voice mail. There was a receptionist who took a hard copy message for you. Yes, I know I’m dating myself. I turn 45 at the end of the month. In those days, you MIGHT call into the office to check in with your boss, but in my early days in the working world, there were no cell phones, so when you were on vacation, nobody contacted you and you didn’t contact anybody else. People respected this.

Why don’t we do this anymore? These days of being connected 24/7 are burning away our brain cells and burning us out! Am I the only one who feels this way? I’d love to hear your comments.

I can name SO MANY times when my vacation time came and there were still details up in the air for an upcoming event – or three. So I checked email daily and made myself available to clients who had to call. As a result of all of this staying plugged in, I can’t remember the last time I went on a vacation and truly unplugged. Perhaps it was during a trip to London in 2006. My mobile phone would not work across pond and I didn’t bring a laptop. Once – maybe twice – I checked email at an internet café. But other than that, I unplugged. Still though, I couldn’t go a week without checking email. And the last time before that probably some time in 2002. Pathetic.

So when I decided sort of last minute to take off from April 21st thru May 1st, I got excited. And I was DETERMINED to unplug. How did I do?

This week I’m going to share with you how things went. Tomorrow I will discuss my approach to making this work and then I’ll share with you just how I did and how I felt after the 10 days was up.