OtherThanThat

The out of office message carried a pretty clear message:

In honor of the July 4th holiday I am taking my annual Digital Independence Vacation (aka digital cleanse).

For one week, I will be wholly unreachable for any and all matters related to work. Period.

I will neither be checking nor responding to email.
I will neither be answering my phone nor checking voice mail.
I will neither be consuming nor contributing to any social media platforms.

That cleanse begins on Friday, July 1. I will be back in the saddle and rarin’ to go on Monday, July 11.

If you need to reach me for personal matters, you know how to do that.

My plan upon return was to open every email account I had (of which there were several) and do a bulk delete of every inbox. I’d been pretty clear, after all, that I was unreachable and if something was urgent enough I figured they’d get back to me.

You know what? I was right. The world didn’t grind to a halt on its axis. There was no rip in the time space continuum related to my not checking in or responding. And the few things that were urgent, well, those folks got back in touch with me.

The lesson – the world can survive just fine without me thank you very much … and so I’m going to try and take a few steps back and make sure that instead of pushing myself so hard that I sacrifice my sanity, a bit more frequent digital sabbaticals are in order.