Frugal Green Living: On Living Without

One of the first things that popped out when I did my analysis of last year's expenses was how much I was spending on my Blackberry. I work at home, and I hate talking on the phone; why do I need such a thing? When you look at my usage it was ridiculous, maybe 10 minutes a month, mostly wrong numbers.

But the data. The the Blackberry is the email addict's best friend. You keep it in your pants and every email gives you a little thrill as it vibrates. Anywhere, any time, I knew I was wired in and twittered up. I was like Gollum in the Lord of the Rings, devoted to fondling My Precioussssss.

This series isn't about depriving oneself of the things that we need and love, and if you need such a thing for business and are on the road a lot, there is nothing better. I had a dozen excuses for keeping the blackberry; I have an old mother, I am going to be on the road this year a lot for my volunteer gig, etc. But they were really specious; I basically work at home and they don't let me out much.

MONDAY: My son called; he has a new gig working on a by-election and asked to borrow my Blackberry. With great trepidation I loaned it to him.

WEDNESDAY: Out to a meeting without that familiar block of electronics in my jeans.

I must say I missed the buzz, I was nervous about what was going on that I was missing. I was at a meeting at my bank and wanted to steal their computer to check my mail. When I got back I had 62 unread emails and felt like I had been in Antarctica or the moon, a whole hour out of touch with the wired world.

An hour unwired, a bit shaken, but I survived.

THURSDAY 10EST: I am at a conference all day. There is no wifi in the building. And I have no buzzing Blackberry in my pocket. It is not yet 10 in the morning and feel really out of touch. Did my newsletter go up? my slideshow? how can I twitter?

But then I am listening to a very interesting Fritz Haeg and I am actually concentrating on what he is saying.

11EST: They do have wifi, I am wired again. I spend 20 minutes checking emails and miss the first 10 minutes of the next speaker. Where are my priorities? I go back to my seat and listen for the rest of the day and stop thinking about email.

1700EST: I get home and check to find 132 emails. Three are important and not one is time sensitive.

FRIDAY: I am at a trade show most of the day, and have completely forgotten about that reassuring vibrator in my pocket. It seems to have taken all of two days to break the Blackberry addiction. I get home to 186 email messages, none of which are time-sensitive. Not only that, but I find that most are not even worth reading; instead of constantly checking my email at home or my Blackberry on the road, I scan the titles, open perhaps ten messages and then mark them all as read. I think that I might have just cured my email addiction as well.

I live in a wired world; I share a Skype watercooler chat where 22 people spread from Berlin to Baja know when I go to the bathroom. But perhaps sometimes it is a good thing to get untethered occasionally, to listen to the speakers one is supposed to be listening to, to look at the stuff I am supposed to be looking at, instead of being distracted by every single Google alert, newsletter and Facebook message. I have gone a week without a Blackberry and I have survived; in fact I might say I have even thrived. I think I might let my son keep the thing.