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Where Am I? I’m on Vacation, I Think.
7/6/2005
Even though I am only 6.3 driving miles from my office on the edge of the University of Michigan central campus (probably less than 4 miles as the crows fly, and they do fly each day from the U-M golf course to spots around here), I live on a rural dirt road without cable and am stuck dialing up with my Treo when I am home. To top that off, we are on the edge of a cell and I can watch the little bars grow and shrink and kick me offline approximately once every ten minutes.
I like the fact that John just IM’d me about our Southern Region’s email newsletter and that another colleague, Betty Cobb, also just IM’d me sharing her success at getting the final sponsor for SCUP’s 2005 Campus Sustainability Day. I also just sent the editor at Campus Technology my picks, by email, for news items for this issue of IT Trends and I’ll shortly send him this brief essay.
At the same time, I am sitting in my old farmhouse’s airy front porch, watching the corn and soybeans grow over to the north and groups of horses wander to and fro at the boarding farm which I can see about 1,000 feet off to the west down past the end of the fairway for Hole 9 of my private disc golf course.
Speaking of which, as I sit on my rural porch, I am also drafting the next issue of PDGA Member News (Professional Disc Golf Association) and watching the chain of emails as our PDGA Disciplinary Committee resolves an issue of alleged cheating during a major tournament in Des Moines, Iowa a few weeks ago. I’m debating my response to a choice of times, just presented by email, for a face to face retreat of a United States Green Building Council committee. (Let’s see, Chicago in August or Seattle in September, hmmm.) Later today, I might put on my (wired) headphone for my Treo and join a conference call with people at other associations and the EPA about a conference in Maryland in November.
I’m also watching the weather with my browser, because my wife and I are likely to go canoing along the Huron River later this afternoon. And out-of-town friends are on their way over to play my course momentarily.
So, where am I? My answer is that I am in heaven on Earth: I am where I want to be, picking and choosing my priorities about how to spend my time, but not tremendously disconnected from anything or anywhere or anyone I might want to be connected to.
Sounds like heaven to me. Now, if only heaven had broadband!
About the author: Terry Calhoun is Director of Communications and Publications for the Society
for College and University Planning (SCUP). You can contact him through CT's IT Trends forum by clicking here. View more articles by Terry Calhoun.
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