I did take my Iphone of course, but I didn't go to my LinkedIn, Twitter, Foursquare or email accounts. I did post some cool places I visited on the beach on my Facebook account so my friends and family knew I was still breathing.
It was by far one of the best, stress free vacations I had been on in a long time and I was in the middle of a hurricane!
Here are the lessons I learned from all of this:
1) I am not that important...and as I watched the other A Types in restaurants on their phones and checking emails it just made me LOL. There was one dude on the beach with his laptop, I am not making this up.
2) If you are good at what you do, it will be there when you get back. No one got mad or upset that it took me 3-4 days to respond...work still went on.
3) Your friends and family appreciate it when you are fully engaged with them and not your social media tools. I mean sometimes....I didn't even know where my phone was. Imagine that.
4) I feel like I actually had a break. I think this one is most important. I feel my battery has been recharged and I am ready to get back to work!
Now, this morning, I had about 450+ emails of those I need to answer maybe 100 or so. I had 45+ Facebook invites, messages etc. Not feeling too inclined to respond to those. I had 50+ Twitter connection requests and several LinkedIn messages. It will probably take me until lunch to get through all of this, but hey I am doing it with a smile and sand still in my shoes.
I have a big presentation to finish today and tomorrow and I feel like my creative juices are flowing once again. So, here is my advice to all you Cathy's out there....
Unplug...it does a body good!