I do know about the relaxing feeling of unplugging. No phone, no internet, no TV. The freedom to seize the day, not be remote-controlled in your actions (by the ringing or beeping of incoming information)…. and I love it. Love to take the time to read a good book. Sit in the sun. Take long walks on the beach.
But it is a pain if you need to get work done. Which, unfortunately, I had during the last week that I spend with my girl and her folks on the danish coast, in a lovely house on top of a sand dune, just a bit from the sea. There was no internet, no usable outbound phone line to plug into… so I started searching for WiFi hotspots. Figures - there was one! Just by the camping site, 15km away. Too bad that I only had reception when I was standing right on the parking lot of the camping site, holding the laptop at shoulder height, slightly angled…… it felt a bit like I had to take a position that especially amused the gods to get a signal. Of course, there was no way I could actually surf the net in this position, thus no research, just mail, and godforbid large attachments!
After four days, I quit, telling the people waiting for my input that it might just take until the end of the week for me to get it done. I stopped trying to make the wilderness-hostspot work, stopped worrying as nothing would really happen anyway - no deadline would be missed - and started enjoying my holidays for real. Unplugged.
Now I have to work up in about a day what I wanted to spread over most of the week, so I am really busy writing this. Couldn’t you wait asking me about my holidays till tomorrow? Really.