I’m going up the chair lift when I feel my ski jacket start to vibrate. I slip my hand into my hip pocket in case it starts ringing. No ring this time, just a jingle notifying me of a new text message. I’m becoming a cell phone junkie.

I love texting people, taunting them with the latest ski report. A quick text and I can find out the best runs, the longest line-ups and where we’re meeting for lunch. Trying to hook up with friends on the hill? A cell phone is an absolute necessity.

In Penny’s blog, Cell Phones and Ice Fishing, she describes driving down the QEW in Toronto, while her daughter is texting a friend who is ice fishing. She writes,

Is it just me, or does anyone else find it slightly surreal that one leggy blond 19-year-old student dressed to the nines and sitting in a car hurtling along a highway in southern Ontario can chat away with another leggy blond 19-year-old sitting beside a snow machine in the bush some 400 km away and bundled to her eyebrows in winter gear? Who knew that cellphones work at —30, or that you can get a signal in the middle of winter out on a frozen northern lake? I can’t even get a signal in Parry Sound in the middle of summer!

We are living in the age of instant communication. While I love the immediacy of text messaging, not all news is good news. Despite being on holidays this week, I’m still chatting via email with an editor about story ideas. I’m arranging meetings for next week, and talking to colleagues mid-mountain. In short, I’m not really escaping anything, I’ve just expanded the perimeter of my office.

My husband is experiencing the same phenomenon. Over breakfast this morning, he received an employee’s resignation, discussed another company’s buy-out option all while helping me get the kids ready for ski camp.

Aren’t holidays suppose to be all about getting away from it all? Why then do we insist on taking it (and everyone else) with us????

Cheers,

Julie

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 20th, 2008 at 4:50 am and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.