I'm Bill and I have Digital OCD!

Hi Bill!

Last night Joanna Lumley told me that I had Digital OCD.  I was sitting in a meeting and from my pocket my cellphone announced to the quiet room "You've Got Post!".

I smiled and said, "Thank you, Joanna" and pretended it was a normal event.  Half of the room had noticed, the rest didn't.

10 years ago, it would have been the height of rudeness to have an electronic device announce that you have post!, email.  Now everyone seems to think it is normal if you get a message once in a while and brush it off.

I have joined the Digital, Always On, age, firmly.

I can't walk the dog without having the phone turned on in my pocket.  More than half of the mornings when I am out with the dog in the pre-dawn hours I hear Joanna announce to the neighborhood that I have post!  I simply laugh to myself and wander onward and nudge the dog from her sniffing.

The room divider between the living room and the dining room has become a charging station between the Android Phone, Android Tablet, iPhone, Bluetooth headset, as well as other assorted electronic detritus.

After all, if you've got the phone on charge, you've got to get to the thing in case you miss a call, right?

When I first got the Android Phone, Joanna was much busier.  I made the mistake of "taking advantage" of the phone being always on.  I added all my email accounts to the list for the thing to watch.  Add to my professional account, my personal account, the account for the various organizations that I am the Webmaster for, and the account that I put my spam on, and it got to be too much. 

One by one, the accounts dropped off until only the professional account was left.  Now Joanna is less of a nag, and more of a Siren, asking for my attention and warning me that I am about to miss something important.  After all, you would want to know if your little boat was about to hit the rocks, Odysseus!

A slightly mixed metaphor, perhaps.

It's a habit I had on the PC as well.  I run a program called "Pidgin" that ties together various chat networks such as AIM, Yahoo Instant Messenger, and MSN Instant Messenger.  It also checks your mail from various services.  It was sounding off so frequently that while writing this article, I had conveniently forgotten that I had it turned off. 

Plausible Deniability? Perhaps, but it took much less time to write this posting than usual. 

Yes, it's an efficient day.  Sometimes you have to step away from the "help" to get the work done!  Joanna is on duty to help me get through the most important items, the rest can take a small step back.  After all, life is about balance and moderation. 

You wouldn't want to walk into a bear while texting would you?