Off The Grid

cc licensed flickr photo shared by cindy47452

I cannot recall who it was, but I knew someone in the tech biz who talked about taking an occasional “Amish weekend” where he and his spouse turned off their computers, cell phones, TVs etc for 2 days as a means of focusing on life, free of gadgets.

For some reason, I decided to stretch it out a bit longer, and spent more than a week off the grid- the laptop closed down, no email, twitter, blogs, etc. Nearly everyone I work with at NMC had lovely exotic vacation travel plans the same week, but given the amount of travel I have done this year, I wanted to experiment with spending some time away from the hubub.

I did have a personal commitment to be elsewhere in Arizona the last day of the Open Education conference regretfully necessitating an early exit, and I did spread a few various rumors of going someplace out of the ordinary, but it was a ruse.

I had some fun when i returned seeing a few emails and twitter direct messages from friends who wondered if I was okay since I was not seen online. That was interestingly re-assuring.

Of course there was no blogging, with some chagrin after having the fun of hanging with Jim Groom in Vancouver mutually celebrating our efforts to be among the last of the “Bloghicans”, die hards who won’t give up The Blog (yo, Rev, it was just a vacation, I’m back!).

Also, I reluctantly did much less photography, and ended up back posting stuff for my piece of 2009/265 photo action.

What the heck did I do? Tended the garden. Watched the construction of a new carport. Watched movies (more Deadwood *@%ing Yay; the new Star Trek blech baby Trekkies are cute but enough plot holes to fly the Enterprise through). Read a great book found at a thrift store The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America (non-fiction account of the intersection of genius and madness at the 1982 1892 Chicago World’s Fair) plus a backlog of magazines and articles. Tried to learn some constellations.

cc licensed flickr photo shared by nixter

I can’t say this was anything prophetic or even remarkable in terms of an experience, especially as I continue to flail out of the email and to-do piles that did not take the same vacation. And I did not really need validation that I can experience life w/o the net.

I know I can.

But let the word out, the dog is back…

cc licensed flickr photo shared by onkel_wart

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