Thus I announced my membership with those who have declared their electronic emancipation.

I have finally achieved that time that eventually comes to in many a mans life where he sheds the multiple pagers and cell phones because quite frankly, nobody really always needs to be able to reach out and touch me, at least not electronically anyway.

Thus, I ditched the cell phone. Of course it wasn’t easy. There was a lengthy process of detoxification whereby I adjusted to the fact that a device on my hip wasn’t ringing every few minutes night and day. I kept the pager, but aside from the daily news I get it only goes off when a select few friends, family, and co-workers who have signed legally binding non-disclosure statements prior to being given my number are attempting to reach me. Still, I rarely stop what I am doing to return the calls. Sometimes it may be hours until I get around to answering a page. This apparently is something unheard of in today’s connected society but I live to be a rebel.

Don’t get me wrong, I am by no means becoming some sort of technology agnostic. Like Paul I can state, "I am the worst of sinners." But a few short months ago I was there with the best of you. I had the pager going off at all hours of the night, every night. My cell phone was attached to my ear so often that friends and family joked that I should have it permanently stitched there by a surgeon. Pathetically, the counter on my cell phone showed that in the month prior to my giving it up I had used an epic 2640 minutes! Not something I am actually proud of as that statistic reflects that fact that up until 4 months ago I really had no life outside of my work.

Now, all that has changed. With my recent move to Atlanta I was determined to re-evaluate the priorities in my life. I got philosophical; asking, "Was all that I am defined by my job or was I something more?" Plus, I selfishly wanted to actually have a life to my family and myself outside of the office. "For shame!" shouted my colleagues who were as connected to their jobs as the newborn whose umbilical has yet to be severed following birth. How dare I think that work was not my life? That I not be immediately accessible twenty-four-by-seven by any co-worker or customer who might want to make even the most frivolous query?

Still, undaunted by their jeers I was determined to start disconnecting myself from the office and actually do something other than work during my precious time off.

So after years of being just a phone call away, I consciously decided that upon my arrival to Atlanta I would commit the most heinous of technological sins and <gasp> not get a cell-phone.

At first my friends at the office tried to tempt me. "Go ahead, use mine…just one call" they said, but I held out. I even suffered through withdrawals of a sort. Reaching for my hip in traffic or getting the shakes when my pager went off because I couldn’t return the page for a half hour or more.

But eventually it was OK. My friends and co-workers adjusted to the denigration of having to leave me a voice mail or waiting until I found a convenient opportunity to return their page. I even grew used to the lack of ringing and buzzing in my life, though I must admit even the silence now seemed strange in a way. I found that at night I was still waking up every other hour or so. My body had gotten so accustomed to being aroused by my pager or phone going off in the middle of the night that it had forgotten how to sleep the entire night away. I understand from my friend who is a fireman that this is a common phenomenon suffered by those who are awoken on a regular basis. That and schizophrenia.

For those of you who have been considering taking the leap and getting rid of their cell-phone my advice is "come on in, the water is just fine." I would be happy to help in anyway I can but if you need to contact me for further advice I suggest you don’t try to call. No one is answering the phone.