It finally happened. My hard drive crashed.
Thanks to being pretty good about having my stuff backed up, I didn’t lose too much data. But it was an inconvenience to take the computer for diagnosis and repair, wait a day for the new drive to be installed, reinstall some programs that aren’t on the new drive, and adjust to some upgrades that have taken place since the original drive was built. I’m still adjusting.
Although I wasn’t left in a technology wilderness – since I have a cell phone, iPad, laptop computer, and office computer, I found that there are some things that I do on my home desktop computer – like composing these blogs – that I don’t do anywhere else. During the days when I didn’t have the home computer available to me, guess what? I just didn’t fill the time on some other device. I took a technology holiday – and it was kind of fun.
Now that the computer is up and running, I am still enjoying some of the residuals of my technology vacation. I have chosen to not re-install some programs that I never use any more but was hesitant to delete for fear I might need it at some future time. I’ve also done more deleting of unnecessary stuff on other electronic devices such as my laptop and cell phone. Also, since I could not access my computer at all for a couple of days, I’ve come to recognize that I don’t need to sit down at it as frequently to check my various emails.
Having had the experience, I heartily recommend that you build an occasion technology holiday, or at least a min-vacation, into your schedule. Plan to take a day or two away from the technology that you don’t have to use for your job. Treat it like a real vacation with activities to fill your technology time – such as leisurely meals, exercising, reading books, and even writing letters by hand.
It may be hard at first, but you will feel healthier for doing so.