Detox Tech Diet Day 6. What Would Dad Say ?

I've been wondering what my father would have to say about all this technology. When Dad left this world it was 1986. A lot had changed since he was born in 1921, but in retrospect the change was just the tip of the iceberg.

In 1986 a cellular phone in an automobile was a relatively new concept. Handheld phones were rare and big enough to double as a doorstop. And if you don't believe me check out the one Michael Douglas is using  in the movie Wall Street.  There was no Internet information highway, no iPods, cable television was considered a luxury and CNN was only six years old.

So today, on Father's Day, also Day 6 of my Detox Tech Diet, I am wondering what he would have to say about this plugged into something 24/7 world we live in.

Dad was a fan of new technology. He got into the appliance business in the early days of refrigeration. He worked for companies like Crosley, Westinghouse, and Philco-Ford. My mother tells me that when they were first married in 1951 they had no money and very little furniture, but they had a black and white Crosley television that sat on a cardboard box  they turned on to watch a funny new show called I Love Lucy.

Dad worked  surrounded by what was considered cutting edge at that time and so we grew up with an abundance of the latest new technology, like the dishwasher on wheels that barely fit next to the counter and had to be attached with a hose to the kitchen faucet.

Dad was fascinated by progress. And I imagine he would  be sitting wide eyed and  with a great big smile in front of the computer my mother  refuses to own if he were still here. He would have enjoyed keeping up with every member of our big fat Greek family through pictures on Facebook. I think he would have embraced cable and I imagine be  a fan of the History Channel.  I don't believe he would ever forgo the newspaper, if for nothing else the crossword puzzle. Dad is one of the few people I have ever known that  could complete the entire Sunday puzzle and in ink.

But Dad was also a socializer. He liked people. I think he too would worry about communicating more electronically than in person. He would miss the likes of Walter Cronkite style journalism while still being mesmerized by the speed and ease in which information is now shared.

Dad also believed in his quiet time. While not very Zen, his morning ritual consisted of coffee and a cigarette in silence. He would get up early so he could take some time to sit at the kitchen table quietly in his own thoughts. I never thought to ask what he was thinking about. I only knew to be sure not to interrupt his special time.

Mom and Dad opening wedding presents in 1951

My detox tech diet Day 6 continues on Father's Day. And in honor of Dad I will conduct my own version of his morning ritual. It will not include a cigarette but there will be coffee and silence and lots of thinking. Mostly about him.

Day 4. The Detox Does Not Get Easier

I'd like to tell you this is getting easier. But it's not. Day 4 of my Detox Tech Diet and  in some way it's becoming more challenging. There is that worrisome little voice in the back of my head that keeps telling me I am missing something life changing by not checking my email every five minutes and that there is something of monumental importance in one of the 500 blogs that sits unopened in my Google Reader, not to mention the 65 newsletters in my inbox.  I am starting to wonder what all my Facebook friends and Twitter followers have been up to this week.

But the voice passes. When I do check my email I am assured that I haven't missed anything that couldn't wait a bit. And that check in is slowly shifting into something I can look forward to as opposed to an energetic drain. If anyone really, really wanted to find me they can call.  The fact is I am rather enjoying this pause.

And that's the thing I'm noticing. All of this obsessing and overusing  our technological advances is not only draining the power sources of Con Ed, it's been draining me. Trying to stay on top of my tech plug ins is  an effort by me to control when in fact I am the one being controlled.

But that's starting to shift. Like an alcoholic without her poison, I feel lighter this week. I am up earlier and with a much clearer head, even if my hands are shaking a bit. I notice more and more how epidemic this addiction has become and I am determined to find a balance.

Surprisingly I do not miss television news at all. But that may have more to do with my own personal backlash from spending so many years in the TV business and being forced to watch the 24/7 news channel I worked for. The other twist is that next to The View, that channel, NY1 is the only one I have to stop myself from turning on.

I threw The View into this diet because I consider it more a news source than a talk show. I admit to cheating a little here. I did DVR the show so I will have a week's worth of episodes  sitting in my  cue  when this diet is over. The only thing I know about the show this week is that  Whoopi Goldberg (my personal fav) is on vacation.  I'm wondering if she heard about my tech detox diet and decided to take the week off and do the same thing?

Have I mentioned that I hadn't realized how much I missed the feel of newsprint on my hands until I really started getting dirty with it again?

I was a little worried reading in the Thursday Style section in the NY Times that in a world that gives a cell phone to a twelve year old, there are schools and camps discouraging best friend pairings. It will also soon be easier to divorce in the state of New York. Mmm. We seem to be OK with making and keeping Facebook friends, but not so good with working on those in person relationships.

I discovered in the WSJ that a former colleague and Corporate America escapee, Melissa Perrucci is the brainchild behind IndieShop, a TV show and website that features independent designers and that the secret to finding happiness in New York according to Ralph Gardner, Jr. is the simple things like people watching. Except that with iPhone4 preorders hitting the 600,000 mark, it seems the thing people are watching most is a handheld screen.

So I'm over the hump on this detox and determined not to cheat. I know I can't do this forever, but I also know that I will come out of it on the other side with a fresh perspective and a plan for keeping this more in balance. And that after all, is what detox is all about.

Detox Tech Diet Day 3: Life Is Supposed To Be Simple

Life is meant to be simple and easy. That was the thought for the day on my Louise Hay calendar yesterday. It's humans  who complicate things and now we have high speed 24/7 wired connections  to take that to new levels.

It wasn't supposed to be like this. The promise was that technology was going to help to make life simpler and easier. That was what our engineer at the radio station I worked at in Washington, DC said when he set up my first personal desk computer  in my office in 1994.  We didn't have an IT department then. We had an engineer, the same one who made sure the radio station stayed on the air,  also in charge of getting us all wired.

And yes, while there is information access and interconnectivity I would not want to let go of today, my diet research is substantiating that things are out of control. Last night I caught a man waiting outside the men's room door in Marea, with his thumbs feverishly working that Blackberry. He claimed there was a line, but really, when is there ever a line for the men's room and not the ladies room? I think he was hiding from his dinner companions and didn't want them to know they were not captivating him enough to disengage from his flood of email.  Later that evening I had a friend call me fifteen minutes after he sent me a text, wondering why I had not responded. I explained that in trying to not check email I had hidden my phone from myself.

Yes, it is time to  gain  some control over all of this intrusion.

I am rather proud of my discipline. The email continues to be the most challenging, so I've reframed the experience. I look forward to the  4x a day  I check it like a kid on Christmas morning, certain of some of the presents under the tree but eagerly anticipating a few new surprises.

I've stopped eating breakfast in front of the computer. I hadn't realized I was browsing cyberspace and chewing in front of my 21.4 inch monitor until I couldn't browse. So for a really creative twist, I've gone back to eating at my dining room table where there's a window with a view that does not require a mouse. What a concept!

The newspapers continue to enthrall me with new information. Stuart Elliott's column in The New York Times writes of  a company that wants to intrude more on my dwindling quiet time  with television advertisements in the supermarket right next to the products.  I've been worrying about what is going to happen to our thumbs with all this texting and smartphone emailing, but in San Francisco they are worried about the radiation rate and are creating new laws that will require cellphone makers to list it.

I've also learned that Dawn dish detergent is being used to help clean oiled slicked pelicans. One bottle of Dawn for each bucket of water and three buckets of water to wash a single pelican! A mattress can cost as much as $33,000, the Shinnecock Indian Nation on Long Island has finally been officially recognized ( I hadn't realized they weren't),  a star Ballerina was mugged in my neighborhood (It was really hard not to turn on NY1 for more details on that one!)  and a new show called Hot in Cleveland premiered on TV Land to a good review in the Times. I was surprised to read Alan S. Blinder's Opinion piece in the WSJ (recommended reading). I didn't think the Journal allowed anyone saying something positive about our government's economic rescue efforts.

So I am gaining control. Not quite halfway done this experiment I know for sure that disconnecting completely is impossible. We are all too far into being electronically wired to each other for that to happen. And as one who embraces technology and social networking I don't want to. But there has to be a balance. If this has become our new addiction, then like food addictions and sex addictions we cannot eliminate them completely from our lives, but we have to discipline ourselves.

Day 2. The Detox Tech Diet Continues

I am happy to report that as I am about to complete Day 2 of the Diet I am still alive and breathing, not to mention feeling much more space in my life. The separation anxiety prevails but how could it not ? Aside from my own personal tethers to our electronically connected world, I am noticing more and more that I am not alone in this addiction.

Take yesterday at Equinox. First there was the short woman with the sunglasses, her legs moving quickly on the elliptical machine, clearly trying to keep up with the pace of her thumbs on the pink covered iPhone she held with both hands.  Then there was the woman working with her trainer, who took not a moment to breath, but a moment in which they could both check their email and rush off a note to someone, somewhere. Maybe it was about those poor fish fighting for their lives in the oil slicks in the Gulf. I didn't ask. I'm not one to strike up conversation in the gym. Usually because I have my headset on, listening to my iPod. But maybe that will change soon as I have declared headsets off limits during this diet. Yes, even my exercise will be without distraction.

Because what I am getting most  from this detox, is that all of this multi tasking takes us away from being with us. Doing two or three things at a time is energy draining. We are not present for anything when we stop midstream to answer a cell phone or check an email as if it might be President Obama himself or George Clooney and if we don't respond immediately our chance for a meeting will be lost forever.

As my personal research indicates this technological overload is reaching epidemic proportions. The WSJ supports that. They ran an article yesterday on Why Relaxing is Hard Work because we are so wired to other places and things. This was my favorite quote from Edward Creagan, a medical oncologist who writes a blog for the Mayo Clinic on stress.
"We're driving ourselves wacko with no time to power down."
Dr. Creagan suggested limiting your access to an hour at a time and he didn't even consult with me! Great minds think alike.

My newspaper meanderings also learned from the New York Times that  Rawanda , a dirt poor nation has a national health plan. Turns out mosquitoes are more attracted to men than women, and Starbucks is  offering free Wi-Fi access so now you can go have a coffee in a public place, stay longer, but be so involved in your laptop that you might not notice if Lady Gaga sat down next to you. More encouragement from business to not be with you.

I was sorry to learn that the CEO of Sara Lee, 56 year old  Brenda Barnes is on a leave of absence due to a stroke. I was even sorrier when the better part of a half page article in the WSJ discussed only how this would affect the company and the shareholders and nothing to the causes of her illness or her prognosis.  But hey, that's Corporate America for you. I just hope the stress of her electronic tethers to her job did not contribute to her illness.






As a side note this happens to be my 200th post. 

The Detox Tech Diet: Day 1

When I set my mind to a project and give myself strict parameters I am very disciplined. I look at it all as a game. If you break the rules you lose.  So at the end of Day 1 I am winning. But not easily.

You see this diet is a great deal more difficult than I had anticipated. I knew I was spending a lot of time wandering cyberspace but had not realized how much until I told myself I couldn't. And checking email only 4x a day! Well that was something I threw in for fun at the last minute and am finding the most difficult of all.

But I knew I was onto something right with this idea when I got into the elevator in my building last night. A man who lives here walked on, looked at me as if I was intruding on his private space, pressed the button for 12 and then made a call on his cell phone. I had to stop myself from asking if the call was the answer to cleaning up the oil in the Gulf and that was why it couldn't wait the three minutes until he walked into his apartment.

I read two newspapers cover to cover  and flipped through last week's New York Mag yesterday.
I learned Best Buy is giving away a cell phone application that would allow audiences to use their cell phones during a movie. That's what we need. More encouragement to not just be with one thing or person at a time.

I've decided the Wall Street Journal's new Greater New York section seems more repurposed articles from the NY Post than the quality that I expect from  WSJ journalism. I also found out that one of the most distracted, over booked and self involved doctors I ever went to in New York got himself on the list of Best Doctors 2010. Go figure.

The most interesting part for me is the feeling of separation I am getting as I limit my cyber news intake and read only what I choose.  I have an anxiety that I must quell that there might be something going on out there that I won't know about, some important something that I need to know.  Then I remember being in my twenties when I had to go out every Friday night and meet my friends. No matter how I felt or whether I wanted to, I went because I thought I might miss something. That might be the night the next great love of my life was waiting to meet me.  But I never missed anything and the loves, well, I always seemed to meet them somewhere else.

It makes me wonder if this new obsession we all have to be constantly in touch and connected is more of an addiction than anything else. Something that is keeping us from ourselves.  And as in most addictions to food, or alcohol or sex,  can be a good thing  when consumed in moderation but can be detrimental to our health when in overdose.

The folks at AA might want to get ready. This could be the new 12  step recovery program for the 21st Century.