We are sometimes too connected. We have text messages, voice mails, emails, twitters, youtubes, facebook and myspace to name a few. All of these new age inventions give us those much needed day to day,  minute to minute and hell sometime second to second updates to the people and situations both real and virtual. Its strange and it is highly unnecessary but somehow we get sucked in. Why? Why do we need to know what our friends are doing every minute of the day? Why do we have to share our feelings every minute of the day? Are we just that narcissistic?

I fought technology like an aging monkey trapped in a cage. I remember in my second year of undergrad when my professor requested that we find our syllabus on his homepage. “His what?” I thought. Why can’t he just print it out like the other professors and give them to us right now. This same professor requested that we send our homework to him via email. I thought he was the stupidest person in the world as I trekked to the computer lab in the cold winter night just so I could attach a word document to this phantom electonic mail service. So dumb! He kept saying that email would be the way everyone would communicate in the near future and I was convinced that he was truly the nutty professor. Why would I walk to a computer lab to sit at a desk to send my friend a message when I could just pick up the phone and call him or her? So naive I was then. If someone needed me, they could just beep me and I’d hit them back on the celly. Yes, I had a pager still. So playa!

So fast foward to almost ten years later and most of all my correspondence is virtual. Yes. Me the technology hater. Throughout the day I now text, email, facebook, myspace (even though I love FB much more) and recently I find myself being slowly sucked into the twitter. (The twitter is only for political purposes right now. I found it interesting that the senators were twittering while President Obama held his first state of the union-esque address.  Sooo, I checked it out.)

What is it about needing, wanting and having to constantly stay in touch with the world? My wife and I took off last week for our 2nd honeymoon in Cabo. We promised to leave our blackberries OFF the hold time and we did. It was weird the first day but after a few hours I realized how much I did not need to be connected. It felt good to sit in the jacuzzi and someone just walk up and tell us that there was a snowstorm in Atlanta. We just looked at each other and kept on going with our day. It was nice to lay out on the beach beds and listen to the crashing waves of the ocean. It was nice to read alongside each other and just be present. No gadgets, no phones and no connection with the outside world.

As soon as we got back to the states, we found ourselves back to the blackberry. I wonder why it was so easy then and not so much now. We are both beeping and chirping now. Between instant messages, facebook updates, emails and chats we find ourselves annoyed. So why can’t we just let them go?

Why? It’s not a need I found out last week. It is more of a passive filler of time. The blackberry does NOT help! They dont call it crackberry for nothing. Its truly addictive. I remember why now I got rid of it back in the day.

So I think I’m going to disconnect myself a little bit at a time. I’m trying so hard not to miss anything that I think I’m missing something most important—peace.

Habits are hard to break but I plan to break this one or at least bring it down a couple of notches.