| "I never go on vacation," said a Manhattan real estate | | | | long ago and faraway interlude of two weeks.What's |
| agent. "And when I do, I have my computer, my Palm, | | | | an exhausted and tense person to do? Here's our |
| my e-mail and my cell phone with me at all times."It | | | | humble but functional answer. Most years we take |
| seems that our tech toys have become the adult | | | | long weekends, with only an occasional year in which |
| equivalent of an umbilical cord. So how can we live | | | | we indulge in a flagrant week or two away from our |
| without them?And what about now, when, as a good | | | | day-to-day entanglements. We find the possibility of |
| citizen, who also doesn't want to get arrested, you at | | | | frequent breaks inviting, and we don't get taken out of |
| least have to endure your plane trip without their | | | | our lives the way the extended vacations of yore |
| nourishment and comfort? Let's do a checklist of tech | | | | used to separate us from our usual doings. We also |
| tonics that can cause us to experience separation | | | | find that most of the world is within reach during these |
| anxiety.Your laptop. No more making the flight a | | | | three-day to five-day intervals.Of course, if you're |
| window to catch up with your work or idle the time | | | | thinking of heading to Australia or the Far East, you |
| away with a video game. Even if you're reunited with | | | | may be doing little more than making a U-turn, so |
| the high-tech marvel after the flight, what if you're on a | | | | better reserve those destinations for the rare times |
| tropical island, marooned on the coconut garden | | | | when you dare a week or - dare we even mention |
| without a high-speed Internet connection?Your cell | | | | the words? - two or even three weeks?Then again, |
| phone. No more last minute chats before takeoff or | | | | you can always decide to move to a vacation |
| immediate reconnection on landing. How bereft can life | | | | destination forever, especially when you compare the |
| get?Your Palm or Blackberry. Can't take either of | | | | length of the idylls in other parts of what we loosely |
| those on board either, and, as you know, out of phone | | | | refer to as the civilized world.According to the |
| numbers and email addresses, out of business, worse | | | | Organization for Economic Cooperation and |
| yet, cut off from your entire social life, at least, for the | | | | Development, as of 2004, in the US full-time |
| seemingly eternal length of the flight.Your MP3 player. | | | | employees have 3.9 holiday and vacation weeks off a |
| No, no, anything but that! How will your soul survive the | | | | year, while in the UK they have 6.6 weeks, in France 7, |
| deafening silence?And the reluctance to separate | | | | and in Italy 7.9.But do you really want to part with the |
| from our tech tools isn't the only reason many | | | | good, young USA for an extended or everlasting |
| Americans are reluctant to take the vacations they | | | | break? For most of us the thought remains an |
| once flew out of their office chairs for. Most | | | | occasion for separation anxiety that we simply can't |
| Americans also fret, in these days when what used to | | | | endure.Tom Attea, humorist and creator of |
| be called workaholic hours now seem more like half | | | | NewsLaugh.com, has had six shows produced |
| days, that the employer will use the occasion to | | | | Off-Broadway. Critics have called his writing |
| replace you with somebody who has shown promise | | | | "delightfully funny," "witty," with "great humor and |
| of never needing something as irresponsible as a | | | | ebullience" and "good, genuine laughs. |
| vacation, at least, not one that goes on and on for that | | | | |