Hoo boy–we can go all the way back to Day 13 on this one….

As I’ve said many a times on this blog: I’m hardly a Luddite. A good portion of what I do professionally involves writing and thinking about how people use technology. And I think there are plenty of good uses for computers and cell phones and tablets in daily life. But I’m realizing–OK, maybe admitting and accepting are better words–that I’ve developed a somewhat dependent relationship with my phone.

OK, I’m not on my phone all the time, that’s for sure. But when that little red counter pops up and tells me I have an unread email or text, I have a compulsion to read it. So as a result, I am constantly allowing all sorts of other worlds–emails from work, from my kids’ teachers, from various community groups, commercial interests, and random others–to slip into whatever I am doing at that moment.

So why would I want to do that? How can I possibly be present when I am trying to be so many other places all at once?

It’s a Sunday. I’m on vacation. Just for today, I have no need to be in touch with anyone or anything else except the people I am with today–not at this moment, at least.

So I’m attempting to refrain from picking up my phone. I’ve left it in the other room. Oh sure, I will have a look at it, sometime. Maybe just the texts. Or maybe a peak at the email….

Or maybe all of it could wait until morning?

Again: it’s not as though I can suddenly claim to be a technophobe (after all: here I am tapping away at a computer keyboard as we speak, happily connected to the Internet). But it seems that it has taken me an awfully long time–from Day 13 to the Winter Solstice–to reach the point of realizing maybe, just maybe, I have much to gain in the moment, if only I could untether–just a bit, at least.

Even just for one day.