Hiya, Wednesday. Have you ever taken Anusara yoga? It’s pretty phenomenal, all about alignment and such...realized why I could never do a backbend and feeling much better now knowing my shoulders were all jacked up in that position...anyway... I wanted to talk to all of you about something that’s been troubling me of late. I’ve been doing lots of writing these days on social media and such and was wondering if you are all feeling, well super taxed by the tremendous amount of “engagement” we have with this blur of work and life these days. By that I mean the whole never disconnected thing. Maybe you are one of the few valiant types left on Earth that don’t feel the need to endlessly check email, voicemail, Facebook, Linked In, Foursquare and any other infinite social platforms, but I have fallen victim to information overload, and my need to disconnect has me feeling a bit depleted of late. I have a visceral fear of not being connected to my life and everybody else's- a fear of not answering an email quickly enough, a morbid phobia of sitting still, and a practically insane need to "app" myself into oblivion. Many of you are too young to remember a time when work was done, and then, well it was done. Sure we pulled all-nighters, and worked as hard as we worked today. But we did not have the same tools that now allow us to be engaged at all hours, at all times. At some point, it’s important to balance the end of the work day, and the time needed to spend with each other to fulfill our needs for a happy home life. Just this morning, I saw families doing digital “cleanses” this am on the Today Show, wherein they make the choice to not use any sort of wired device for a week, and in one extreme case, six months. It sounds insane to all of us, and that in itself is crazy that we can’t fathom a world where people are not plugged in. I’m wondering if it’s time for a little bit of tune out, turn off, drop out before we all implode. There's simply too much ambient cultural and supposed "social" noise happening for any of us to really know what the fuck is going on. My aunt, a stealth watcher of culture who always inspires me for this blog and beyond, told me about a story on her local news in Philadelphia where there’s been a rash of robberies in the very upscale New Hope, PA area. We’re talking spendy homes, mortgaged to the eyeballs, with double Range Rovers to match. The cops were stumped as to how this area was having so many robberies, until they figured out that the burglars were on to the fact that the people in said homes were never there- thus easier to rob. And why were they never home? Because they were working their designer clad tails off to support a lifestyle that was no longer in reach. This brings up two points: why have all this “stuff” if you are working so hard you can’t even enjoy any of it? Or better yet, if you are never home to protect such stuff, somebody is gonna take it from you. Harsh. This leads me to believe that it’s time for all of us to rethink what we think we need to be happy in this lifetime. Many of us have had this notion top of mind in this epic recession- but many still can’t seem to disconnect not only from an endless work cycle, but from all of those material things that supposedly add to life. And maybe if we went a bit more downscale in our spendy ways, we could all be home a little bit more. It’s just a thought. We are all working ourselves into submission and not taking the necessary time to recharge, to free ourselves of stress and hostility and plain old fashioned workplace madness. I’m afraid that this culture of connectivity has turned us all into Type A machines, even if some of us are more likely to fall into the lower level of the alphabet family (more Type C or D for instance). For those of you ready to disconnect this very second, I give you this rather clever site, a website that asks you to disconnect for 2 long minutes, and do absolutely nothing, against a backdrop of a serene ocean. (Of course you need to be connected to a computer to do this, but never mind that). The site is called “Do Nothing For 2 Minutes”, and is already a social sensation. I think we should all try this today, and think about how crazy our lives have begun by all of this constant connectivity and need to be “on”. If we took some time to rethink our values, our work style, and our relationships, we may feel a little less vacant. There is surely more to life than all of these things we think make us whole, make us smarter, and more brilliant in the workplace. I myself have not yet mastered this, but the thought of cave dwelling in India for about a year is becoming more and more appealing as I seek to define myself with things outside of the workplace, and think about what really matters to me. The art of doing nothing is more important than ever- take some time for yourself today and just disconnect. Everybody needs a break from this frenetic open all day and night existence. And that’s what’s up this this thoughtful Wednesday in the MIA. Please find some time for yourself today that doesn’t involve a wireless or wired device. As far as I can reckon, a good walk in the park with someone you are nuts over and a cone of mint chocolate chip is immune from most 3G networks. There’s simply not an app for that. XO http://www.donothingfor2minutes.com/