I'm on vacation in North Carolina with my family. I always have great plans for writing on vacation. I spend hours downloading files to a stick drive. Then I get to the shore and I don't look at the computer for days.
OK, I've been here since Wednesday and it's Monday morning. Time to finally read my email, it should be quiet ... 256 messages!!! And suddenly I'm panicking. I have emails I need to respond to. I have a friend with good news in the writing world I want to congratulate. I have another friend looking for query help. I have people looking for freelance editing getting back to me, asking me what my rates are. I have library books to renew and bills to pay online. Is this what my life has become? Am I so attached to my online life that I can't take a few days off without falling hopelessly behind?
Meanwhile, my family is giving me dirty looks while I type this. They aren't attached to this online umbilical cord. Why am I typing instead of putting on my bathing suit? Don't I realize I'm on vacation?
I remember reading that when Thomas Edison died, someone in Congress proposed shutting off the electricity to New York City for one minute in memoriam. The proposal was refused; by the time Edison died, New York couldn't live without electricity for one minute. How close are we to the day when we can't live without the World Wide Web for a minute? Maybe we're already there.
How much time can you be away from the Internet without things falling apart?
-- Kate, Miss Perfecting the Pages
2 comments:
Kate, it's really hard to get time off when you're a freelancer, that's for sure. I have to admit, even though I'm not doing much of any freelance work now, I still get up early when on vacation and work on my writing while everyone else is still sleeping.
I LOVE being offline while on vaca, etc, but once I get home and reconnect with the internet, I feel like I need to catch up *right then.*
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