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 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.