Getting Away

Not my feet--Someone else's in my family

I haven't posted to this blog for a week and a half now. And I have a good reason why: I was on vacation.

From last Saturday until this Saturday, I was either travelling from my home to Florida, or I was actually in Florida, or I was on a cruise ship headed to the Bahamas, or I was actually IN the Bahamas, or I was on a cruise ship headed home from the Bahamas, or I was travelling from Florida back to my home. Or else I was sitting in traffic on the Spring Break-clogged Interstate 75.

You get the picture.

And while I was on vacation, I took a break, not only from writing this blog, but from focusing on technology at all.

I have my wife to thank for that.

As we were starting to pack for our trip the night before we left, she said to me, "You know, we're going to have a lot of time on the ship to just do nothing."

"I know," I said. "I'm looking forward to it?"

"What are you planning to do with it?"

"I'm going to read!" I said. "I'm going to grab a chair on the upper deck of the cruise ship, away from the noisy pool, and I'm going to turn the chair so that it faces the ocean, and I'm going to read."

"What are you going to read?"

"Well, I have 29 books and 12 magazines that I've downloaded to my Kindle, so I'll have a lot of options, but I'm planning to read three books: Ian Jukes' Living on the Future Edge, a book called What School Leaders Need to Know about Digital Technologies and Social Media, and finally, a book a friend recommended called Stop Stealing Dreams."

Before I had finished my description my wife was shaking her head pretty violently. "Uh uh," she said simply. "I forbid you to bring ANY of those books on the cruise."

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because you need a break," she said to me. "You haven't taken a REAL break for a long time. You need to get away from your work."

"But I will be away from work!" I pleaded. "It just so happens that these types of books bring me pleasure."

"Not this week. Leave them at home. I forbid it."

Which was a ridiculous thing to say. And--to be fair--it was said at least partly in jest. From years of living with me, my wife knows better than to try to order me around. That's not how you get me to respond. I brought the three books along with me despite what my wife said (doing otherwise would have meant deleting them off of my Kindle Fire and I didn't want to do that).

But I did listen to what she said. And it stuck with me maybe more than I thought it was going to. And when the first chance came for me to read on my Kindle, I didn't open any of those books. Instead, I started reading Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games, which is--thanks to the movie--enormously popular right now, and which I'd had sitting on my Kindle since November. And I enjoyed it.

I didn't mean to bore you with a long piece of dialogue, though. What I wanted to get at is this: It's good to get away from the technology for a while. From Monday, when we stepped on the cruise ship, until Friday, when we stepped off, I didn't get on the Internet once. I didn't update my Facebook status. I didn't check my work email. I didn't go online to see what was the app of the day or the Kindle book of the day at Amazon. And amazingly, the world didn't end as a result.

For a week I was able to leave most of the technology issues behind me. It was refreshing. I'm back at work now with renewed vigor, ready to really get some things done now.

So I'm writing mostly to implore others of you involved in EdTech: If you haven't already done so recently, find time to unplug and get away from the technology that is our jobs. And get completely away from it. If you have to, get on a big boat that doesn't have Internet access so that you CAN'T get online. You'll be glad later that you did.