Being connected, feeling disconnected?

This morning, I was charging my cellphone and forgot all about it. Thus, I left the house sans the thing. I dropped off my mom at Church then proceeded to get some photocopying done at a mini-mall three blocks away. As I got out of the car with papers in hand, I patted my jeans pocket -- something I instinctively do to make sure my cellphone is there. No bulk. Initial reaction: "Oh, no." Two seconds later, "Yay, I'm free!" accompanied by a chuckle. Walking over to the photocopying shop, I recalled the few times that I had accidentally left my phone at home, agonizing during the first few minutes over important messages or calls I might miss, only to "let go" and feel relieved that I was free the entire day from the stress that comes along with the need (perceived or otherwise) to reply immediately to text message after text message.

Here's a related piece from the June 3 issue of The New York Times (one section of the Manila Bulletin every Saturday contains selected articles from that paper). Hope the essay makes you think about your own buzzing devices and if they're actually helping you live a better life.

BlackBerry Users, Free Yourselves (and Your Thumbs)

By Adam Bryant

Dear BlackBerry,

It’s been a few weeks since we parted company. I’m sure you’ve forgotten me by now and are still hard at work for my former employer.

That’s good. No hard feelings. I’ve decided I’m actually better off without you.

Why? Because even though you made me feel more productive, I’m realizing that in fact you made me less so. You were always tugging at my sleeve, your blinking red light a constant reminder that maybe, just maybe, you had an urgent e-mail for me. You were a black hole of attention. If there was something urgent, I reasoned, better to know about it sooner rather than later. So I checked. And checked.

Most of it was spam. Thanks.

I thought you were under my thumbs, but I was under yours.

Sure, I’m to blame, too. I made some mistakes, I liked your alarm feature, so I kept you bedside. I’d check you late at night. I’d check you first thing in the morning. Sometimes I’d even check you on Sundays, and often regretted it.

But you gave me something to do in idle moments, while I was standing in line or waiting for a train. With you, there was no dead time. It seemed great for a while.

Living without you, though, there’s more time to think. Daydreaming is an underappreciated pastime, and I’ve been doing more of it since we broke up, often to good effect. The idea percolator works better with fewer distractions.

I realize that not everyone can let go like I did. People who are on the road a lot, in particular, are still in love with you.

But here’s a thought. What if they cooled it just for a week? Wouldn’t that leave more time to puzzle through the kind of questions that help us keep a step ahead of the competition?

I don’t know if this factoid ever landed in your inbox – Google gives its engineers “20 percent time” to pursue pet projects, which has led to nifty new offerings like Google News (something tells me the engineers aren’t spending that free time on their BlackBerrys).

Come to think of it, would it really have been so bad if your company, Research in Motion, had lost that patent dispute a couple of months ago, and service had been shut down for everyone for a while?

It would have ended, at least temporarily, the connectedness arms race – that nagging need to feel plugged in because key people might be e-mailing from anywhere at anytime.

I bet a BlackBerry blackout would strengthen marriages and friendships. Conversations could continue without all the “bzzzts” of vibrating alerts to derail them (Hmmm, let me think. It could be just spam. Then again, it could be something REALLY IMPORTANT. Let’s check. Oh, it’s just spam. Back to the conversation. Sorry, where was I?).

Please don’t take all this the wrong way. It was fun while it lasted. But I’m getting more done without you, even if I look less busy.

I hope we keep in touch. Send me an e-mail sometime.

Just don’t expect an immediate response.