I was just reading this [German] article by Berlin über journalist Markus Albers about how he was forced to detox from Twitter, e-mail & co. while on vacation. These kinds of articles (and books) are riding a twitter thermal to great heights in Germany and, as Markus’ column and this blog entry show, are creating their own echo chamber. Everyone’s talking about how good it is to get away from social media.

Or at least, people who can remember the ‘70s are.

For my part, social media adds a certain rhythm to my work, the way the tap of a bat on muddy cleats belongs to the rhythm of baseball or the drone of air traffic control provides a stilted soundtrack for pilots. As a freelancer, I’m forced to multi-task. I write an article. Translate a few pages of an employee magazine. Do some research for the next article and write a half-dozen emails to various clients. And that’s before lunch.

Social media provides a little buffer in there. A biscuit to clear my mental palate between vintages. When I finish one piece of work, I browse this feed. Giggle at that comment. Follow a link. And when I realize I’ve caught up, I minimize Tweetdeck and turn to my to-do list. Rinse and repeat until it’s 1800 (or earlier if I have to get the kids, but then it just kicks back in once they go to bed).

This routine is difficult. It takes a lot of concentration for a kid who’s used his semi-smarts his whole life to avoid concentration. Clients don't want to hear my cute excuses the way third-grade teachers and college professors would. Clients want results. They want me to concentrate. The social media aspect, the communication overload, gives me a power nap. It allows me to unconcentrate (de-concentrate?).

But back to Markus’ article. He talks about how creative he felt without all that information coming at him, as if the inability to connect to a WLAN or get a few bars on his cellphone had created his own private Walden Pond. Well, a Walden Pond with a wife and baby.

And it made me think about my weekends. For years I’ve avoided my computer on Saturday and Sunday. I don’t want to sit down at the desk and push ‘on’. I can’t bring myself to hit the ‘mail’ button in my cellphone. I feel I’ve let myself down if I do it. My father often emails Friday evenings and is annoyed by the time he sends a second on Sunday. “Can you please answer my last e-mail?” Lately, I’ve been thinking I do it to cater to my shy streak – I use the excuse of a weekend to avoid and deflect. I was starting to think I should actually see what the digital world has to offer on, say, a Sunday afternoon. I should respond to an e-mail or two.

But Marcus made me realize my weekends offline were my brain’s own way of pulling back. I need the weekends to reflect. I use the time to mull and devise ways of dealing with everything that comes at me during the week – Mondays I shoot off a flurry of emails that go sailing out of my Asus laptop like so many racing pigeons let out of their artificial roost for some early morning exercise. And I’ve even launched a new project or two during my first coffee of the week.

This echo chamber of anti-social-media is partially a changing of the generational guard in Germany’s media blotter and partially an examination of social media’s place in our lives. I really enjoy social media. I’m glad to know what my friends are doing. And I like seeing what others I don’t really know are up to (like Markus). And I like taking part in my own life.

So I’m sorry if I miss your weekend status updates.

Several years ago, when I still worked at home, I got some coffee. As I paused to open the gate at the top of the stairs and head down to the office, I set the coffee on the gray steel support that is the back half-wall of our kitchen. It left a ring.

For several days I walked by that steel support and saw the coffee ring. “Yup, still there,” I thought and went on with my day. I present it as a complete sentence but it wasn’t even a complete thought – just registration that the coffee ring was still there. But after several days the thought fragment jelled into a concept – “Yup, still there. I wonder when Sabine will get around to wiping it off.?” The remark made me confront what I was saying to myself.

In the weird world of men where our reptilian brains make compliments out of insults, that last thought was an homage to her skill as an efficient housekeeper. She cleans things better than I do. Or, as I have learned, more quickly and without thinking she could maybe instead watch the last quarter of the Broncos game, try to kill another 50 anti-terrors in Counter-Strike or even read another chapter of the book. She just cleans. Then plays.

But I had caused the ring. Why didn’t I just clean it up? So I did. I also noticed this thought had become a habit. Everywhere I saw little piles of things to do that I expected her to do but that I could just as easily do. So I started trying to do more. I started putting my own clothes away after they’d been folded. I started carrying my own bills from the kitchen counter to the office. I would empty the dishwasher if I found myself with an extra five minutes. Occasionally, I swept. After awhile, she noticed my housekeeping campaign.

“You don’t have to help fold. I like it but you could do the occasional load of laundry,” she said. So I started doing laundry too. It’s not like I wasn’t doing anything – we have the same division of labor breeder couples have had for years. I do the banking, enjoy doing the banking, and she enjoys folding laundry. We used to meet in the middle. But with her now working six or seven days a week, I’ve tried to pick up the slack even more. I notice the laundry detergent is getting low so I get some while picking up the ingredients for that night’s dinner. I stop by the pediatrician to get a prescription for Cy – she had been responsible for doctor visits. I call to sort out this or that.

This weekend she remarked that I’m taking over some of her role as mother since she’s not around as much. I think I’m just carrying more of my weight as father. Which is fine, I’ve been spending too much time behind a computer anyway.

And I like my kids more since I’ve been spending more time with them.