I’ve been rather hip and popular lately. I got the G+ circles with folks whose names or faces I don’t recognize sharing stuff with me on Google Plus, I’ve got FB friends and fans, twitter followers (although I hardly ever tweet), LinkedIn invites and all sorts of other nifty things that ought to make one feel popular, liked, admired or whatever the emotion of the moment we are supposed to feel. Just a few years ago, the only distractions from my work and my life came in via my Outlook, and if I didn’t have it opened, I could spend all day creating something, researching, browsing or doing whatever it is my life or my work demanded of me. Now, I get notices of updates and changes to anything out there popping up in my browsers, pinging my phone and in other ways entering my days at the rate I can no longer keep up with, nor do I want to. I find far too many of these updates and notices to be of the noisy variety, which quite possibly is my own damn fault. I accepted far too many friend requests and I always feel the need to reciprocate in kind to any social interaction…. And so as I sit here working, I find myself overwhelmed by far too much information, far too many names, requests, likes, pings and I am finding myself wanting to disconnect completely.
This past Friday, my youngest turned 11, and all the kiddo wanted was to spend some time hanging out with his family. There was bowling and horseback riding and skim-boarding and all sorts of other little adventures. And for the most part, there were no virtual distractions, and I didn’t miss any of my circles or FB friends or the latest and greatest from Inman or TechCrunch et. al. The only thing I realized I missed, viscerally, were the wide eyes of my little one, and the hope buried deep in those brown lakes that this weekend would not be the last until next year; that he was much more important than the work we do if only because he is one of two reasons we do it (the other reason being in college). And because he is certainly much more important than anything in my G+circles, short of an actual apocalypse.
So from here on out, the folks at hamedia group are disconnecting for the weekends, from everything. The weekends are for the truly important stuff, and while our clients will always be able to reach us via our phones should they ever have a problem, if it can wait till Monday, we’d be grateful if you cut us some slack and wait till then. If it can't, call us.
For everyone else, if I don’t respond to something you tweeted or FB’ed or G+’ed – nothing personal. I simply chose to go out to movie with my boys or went for a bike ride or played with my dogs. I did something non-virtual so that I could give you my full attention when you need it most and do so generously and without grudges.
Originally published on our blog at hamedia.
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