I’ve had several people suggest that I’ve had sleeping problems for awhile now. I resisted the diagnosis for over a year, but a sleep study – which is basically the worst and most expensive night in a hotel all rolled into one – determined that I did indeed have obstructive sleep apnea. So as of this week I have a CPAP machine in my bedroom. I would say that it sucks, but it actually it’s more accurate to say that it blows. My head feels like a balloon as the machine does its thing. More than once I startled myself awake when my mouth opened in the middle of the night and started hissing air. What’s worse, however, my insurance says I have to wear it four hours a night. How would they know? It keeps a log that I have to give to my doctor. While the medical technology invading my bedroom is bad enough, the fact that the insurance company creeps in as well is worse.
I walked out the door without my phone a couple of weeks ago. A creature of habit, I left it on the bed when distracted from my routine. I use my phone a lot on a normal day – I’m writing this entry on my phone as we speak – but it seemed like I needed it more than usual that morning. After learning of my predicament, the saint that is Ms. Boss offered to bring it when she joined me for lunch after her morning meeting. Driving to lunch, I felt like I was launching into the unknown without any way to know where she was or what she was doing or when she would be there. As I sat in the parking lot for what seemed an eternity, I lamented technology’s intrusion into my life and the great anxiety it fomented within me. I have to be honest, the anxiety created in me by the realization of how much I ‘needed’ my device in that moment brought a few tears to my eyes. Soon enough, Ms. Boss appeared which greatly relieved me. When she got out of her car without my phone, however, the first thing I did was ask about was my phone. I deserved the reaction I got entirely. Sometimes when you hold up the mirror in front of you, the reflection is as awful as it appears.
Up until ten years ago, I didn’t have a wireless phone. In a former life, I lived 3/4 mile back a dirt road that turned into a quagmire every time it rained making in impassable for the subcompact car I drove. As I was leaving my desk at work, I would phone home to Ms. Boss then start the one-hour journey home. Inevitably, Ms. Boss would be there at end of the driveway within two minutes of my arrival with the 4×4 to get me the rest of the way home – no cell phone necessary.
Within a year I had two cellphones – one for personal, one for work. While I’ve managed to fight my way back to one, the expectation from my employees ever since has been 24×7 availability for a call. Text messages only made the problem worse. ‘Critical system notifications’? Even computers call me in the middle of the night.
During the ‘bad old days’ at a previous employer, Ms. Boss mentioned that the notification tone that I’d received an email message in the middle of the night would cause me to groan in my sleep. She’s put up with a lot of that. Did I mention she’s a saint?
I am the KING of trivia: I bought a copy of World Almanac and read it cover to cover every year, I browsed atlases for fun, I had not one but two full sets of encyclopedias to peruse. As I’ve often told people, I know millions and millions of the useless pieces of information you would ever want to hear and I learned them all the hard way. Nowadays, all one needs to do to learn something is pull their phone out of their pocket, type a few words, and there it is. What would have been my most impressive skill thirtysome years ago is now irrelevant.