Overscheduled is a half-a–ed way of life

Was there a day when people made appointments and kept them?  That’s what I wondered today after two school-related appointments were canceled.  Still catching my breath from a really busy month, I did not really mind.  It was just one of those instances where I want to stop, shake everyone around me and ask, why are we so over-scheduled?  Why don’t we call a collective detente: stop emailing each other on weekends and after work hours–unless we’re friends–make fewer appointments and commitments so we don’t have to cancel on each other, make an effort with less rather than pack in as much as possible?

I used to be a gung ho about some aspects of digital culture, particularly blogs and online magazines like Slate and Salon.  Then, like many of us, I got blog fatigue.  I realized I would never ever see the day when every folder in my Google reader was not bolded with unread entries, and the idea of skimming everything just to achieve that seems like a pretty daunting way to live life.  Now, I see incessant updating and reading of blogs as part of our attention deficit disordered way of life.  Lecturer after lecturer glows about the possibility of “integrated” “content” of “multi-media.”  But who on earth has time to read it all?

By the same token, who among the purveyors has time to juggle all of the ambitious projects, the “expansions” and “integration” that media set out to do to give the impression–whether true or not–that there is something dynamic going on.  The 24 hour news cycle seems unsustainable to me, if only because people burnout.

A few weeks ago, I observed Shabbat for the first time in years.  I was in Israel on the Birthright trip, and we were not supposed to drive or work or even sight-see.  On an otherwise busy trip, we had a day of rest.  We hung out on a kibbutz near the Golan Heights with palm and banana trees. Our only imperatives were to swim, meditate, or talk with the others.  I relished the boundaries that Shabbat had given me from work and worry.  I thought about observing Shabbat back in America and quickly dismissed it as setting myself up for failure. I would never be bold enough to go a day without missing e-mails or doing journalism school work.

And I thought of myself entering a profession that like many in this country has demanded more hours and compensated with stagnating pay, that nonetheless requires that its practitioners carry every piece of digital paraphernalia around with them, lest they miss a photo or a video or an email with BREAKING NEWS.  Why doesn’t this country simmer down, do less and do what we do well rather than do everything we do half-assed?  How do we return to the period when an 8-hour workday, a pension, and vacation time were an ideal?  The glorious 1950s and 1960s come to mind (which I imagine to be perpetually sunny and filled with space age ideas and workers covering up their typewriters at 5 pm on the dot, a la Mad Men).  One answer is unions.  And turning off Blackberries and leaving our computers sometimes.  Not all the time–no need for extremes.