I've been taking a break from electronic communication for the last week.  For seven full days, I went without e-mailing, Facebooking, blogging, or browsing (with the exception of looking up a couple of train schedules).  Today, I'm breaking that "fast" by allowing myself to get back into some blogging and browsing, which I consider to be recreational activities -- but even so, I'm hoping to keep my time on-line a bit limited, and I'm planning to stay away from e-mailing and Facebooking for another full week, until I resume "regular life" at the conclusion of my two-week vacation.

The break from electronic communication has been good, but not transcendent.  It wasn't as difficult as I thought it might be (I actually feared that I might go through withdrawal symptoms!) -- but at the same time, I don't feel like I've "come to see the evils of modern technologies" either.  I've heard of other people doing such forms of "fasting" with dramatically different results... So maybe I did it wrong.  But honestly, for me the experience has been kind of "Mmwah."  During my time without electronic communication, I felt like I was neither Darth Vader, suffering a painful death apart from my machinery, nor Henry David Thoreau, completely escaping the corruptions of civilization to discover my true self again.  I felt like I was plain old me, just without electronic communication.  I suppose it might have been foolish to expect anything different.

On the flip side of things, I can say that our family had a lovely week of vacation.  I've invested much of my "extra" time in playing with my kids, talking with my wife, and just plain resting.  Our family enjoyed a few days at a CenterParcs cabin in the northern part of Belgium -- and it really was a refreshing experience for us all.  Now it's onto Phase Two of our vacation, back here in Amsterdam... with (limited) electronic communication.