Yes .. i committed sacrilege today. I left my blackberry at home! … What ??!!! I can hear some of you scream … and you survived the day, in one piece – without hypertension, withdrawal symptoms, a nervous breakdown, without your company shutting down ?
The answer to all the above is a resounding YES. Blame it on Monday morning blues, a hundred things on your mind as one is rushing off to catch the 7:24 train, or just plain absentmindedness. Picture this – rushing from one meeting to another, you want to check which one of the damned 14784 meeting rooms spread over a 1000 floors you have to get to in the next 11 seconds,? You can alway count on your trusted blackberry to rescue you. You casually reach into your trouser pocket to nonchalantly flick out the blackberry and expertly type in the password one handed, but your hands meet thin air !! The hair at the back of the head stand up, perspiration start to form at the temples… and you realize that the blackberry is peacefully resting on the bedside table in your house, you look around yourself hoping that your co-workers will not trample you to death because you are the only person in this entire building who does not have his blackberry within 6 inches of him.First things first – the meeting can wait. Rush to your desk, call your wife (hoping you can catch her at home) … curt instructions barked into the phone – “I left the blackberry at home, pls switch it off and keep it where i can find it”.
Suddenly it feels a load has been taken off! I don’t have to to look into that darn GRS every few minutes. You walk around with a slight smirk on your face, silently laughing at all the people around you furiously tapping into their blackberries (their alternative to the cardio-workout – i think).
The day goes by… it actually felt good to not to be attached to that 200 odd gm device representing modern technical slavery. Yes, i did miss the fact that i could not call people on the move (There you go – another modern malady), but the world did not come to an end, the stock price of my company did not fall by 50% because some e-mails were not instantly answered.
So will i do it again – surely i will! … but will i do it tomorrow? No… I do like to live life on the edge – but leaving my blackberry at home for 2 days – that’s taking it too far, even for me.
The whys and wherefores 