Taking a break

I just came back from a week off.  After a couple of weeks of technical difficulties and extra hours, I needed to get away from it all. 

While I had planned on escaping to my cabin in the woods where television doesn’t exist and the phone was only installed a few years ago, the weather did not cooperate and I stayed in town.
But my original plan to get away from the world still lived. 

For an entire week, I avoided the news, watched nothing but movies and didn’t set foot on the net.

Although I saw my neighbours and acted as though I were still part of the world, secretly I had withdrawn.

There was a strange comfort in being completely unaware of anything beyond my neighbourhood. 

The only people I focused on were friends, family and my pets.  Even the Stanley Cup couldn’t make a dent on my cone of silence.

However, on Monday morning when I got up and prepared to return for work, I felt somewhat disconnected. I felt out of step. What had I missed? And was it important?

Well, I missed Neil Patrick Harris and the Tony Awards. Thank goodness for YouTube. 

I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to Meredith Vieira on The Today Show.  I avoided hearing Sarah Palin dig herself a bigger hole when she explained that during his midnight ride, Paul Revere wasn’t delivering a message to the patriots, but actually warning the British that they couldn’t win. I’m guessing it’s an Alaskan logic.

And most thankfully, I missed out on the sudden turn of events with Rep. Anthony’s Weiner.   
But did anything really truly important happen that required my immediate attention? The Air Canada strike threat took me by surprise. Okay, it’s Air Canada so maybe not. 

In fact, the lack of television, Internet, and general plugging in to the world seems to have had no lasting detrimental effects and saved me from witnessing more people behaving badly.

So why was I madly surfing to catch up on the news, gossip and shock talk as soon as I stepped into the office? 

My ignorance was truly bliss for that week. But the moment I returned to the world of fast information, immediate updates and constant change, my need to keep up overwhelmed any lingering calm. 

I’ve often wondered if we really need that constant feed of information from the various outlets – television, Internet, newspaper, radio, social media. They say the public demands it. Do we?

Last week, I proved to myself I could certainly do without even while surrounded by temptation. 
But it’s an addiction, no doubt. Maybe there’s an app for that.