Practicing Irresponsibility

No posts in two weeks, and the last one concerned work:  a sure sign of a pending vacation. 

The first two weeks of August have gone by in a typical pre-vacation whirl.  There’s been no time for perspective or slowness.  Instead there’s been an urgency to finish up tasks, some volunteer, some profitable, some just unintentionally unprofitable. 

The productive blur was preparation for a mere10-day stint away from the daily routine.  Even that disruption in responsibility has been moderated by my notifying clients and volunteer co-committee members of how to reach me while we are out of The City.  (Honestly!  How important do I think I am that my absence from web design productivity or church work would cause a disruption in The Force?  How many Internet emergencies are there, anyway?)

Fortunately panic time ran out, and it was time to get away before Geoff called me “Ruthie” (ala Six Feet Under‘s mother) one too many times. We made it up to Ashland for dinner yesterday. It is hot and dry, and, unlike several of the past years, the air is forest-fire smoke free.  The stage is ready for a nice visit to summer for us fog-bound and fog-loving San Franciscans.

We checked in and discovered that the Ashland B&B we’ve stayed in for eight or so years has added a new feature: high-speed wireless Internet. 

Cool!  Google news and LJ!

Cool, until I found myself downloading email at lighting speed at 9:00 this morning. The berry smoothie and hadn’t even settled, and we hadn’t yet made our first visit to the pool. There I was beating the keyboard trying to craft a clear couple paragraphs on the subtlety of the TITLE tag in Search Engine Optimization  in response to a client’s email.

Fortunately a key stuck or something broke my chain of thought.  Whoa!

I saved a draft of my carefully written answer, closed Outlook, and stepped away from the keyboard.  The voice warned, “Back away all the way from the computer, and no one will get hurt!”

The customer, Scott, knows about my vacation plans.  There was nothing in his email that indicated that he considered his request something of vacation-interrupting importance. 

Clearly it’s time to practice irresponsibility.  I need to close my eyes and imagine missing MUNI busses, letting deadlines go unmet, and savor the joy of not answering ringing phones.

The rest of day one has gone well.  The computer remained on, but only for Age of Conquerers with Geoff.  We’ve shot toypedos at each other in the pool.  We’ve drunk ice tea, played cribbage, and plotted our corkage-free Monday dinner at the local roadhouse.

It’s tough for a Puritanical New Englander like me.  But, I’ll keep training and practicing this irresponsibility until I get it right.