Today it will be a year since I had a cellphone for daily use.

How have I survived without a mobile device with me at all times? Quite simply.

I write more letters now than ever before. Real letters in unreliable script poured from whatever pen I happen to have on hand. I’ve taken a liking to buying boxes of gaudy cards from discount bins and using them instead of nice stationary. It adds a bit of whimsy and relies on existing production.

I use Skype, Google Chat, and some of 37Signals project management tools to carry the weight of business communication. Then there’s Twitter, of course. Email keeps everything together. That all takes place on a computer. There are no fire alarms or vibrating warnings that go off when an email lands in my inbox. No chirps warn me of tweets.

I know the sound of silence.

There has also been a downside. A disconnect that meant missed moments of fun conversation and perhaps a few extra dollars. But that’s it. No government has been overthrown, business gone bankrupt, or child lost a life because I didn’t have a cellphone at the ready. I was able to blunder and triumph, rise and fall, New Yorker and lolcatz–all without a cellphone.

I took a year away from frenetic tech because I wanted to see if life was really all that boring without a digital device in hand. I wanted to see if I really, truly needed to be available to everyone at all hours of the day or if my digital connectedness was just a half-hearted attempt at relevance. It turns out that yes, parts of life can be made more fulfilling with sparing use of tech. That shouldn’t come as a surprise.

What did surprise me was just how well all my existing contacts took to the shift in my communication preference. Friends shifted from offhand texts every day to more substantial email conversations. Family soon learned the joys of Skype and started using it with each other as well. Work contacts took it in stride.

It only took a few weeks and I was in a new groove. A groove with far fewer beeps and buzzes in it.

Now, as the year comes to a close, I look around and I’m not attracted to the smart phones anymore. I don’t like the idea of answering phone calls in the middle of a conversation (I once did so gravely). Why would I want to respond to tweets, texts, emails, and notices from multiple applications in addition to requests for verbal conversation? I wouldn’t.

I worry that we’ve become so caught up in the idea of always being “on” that we’ve lost sight of what it means to really be present in just one conversation. Does your phone go to the dinner table with you? Mine did. Does your phone come out at the slightest whiff of boredom? Mine did. I’m hoping to avoid most of that this time around.

My thought is to have something small, perhaps a netbook, that I can use for email and simple browsing. It will be big enough that I won’t carry it with me everywhere but small enough to fit in a day bag.

And for a phone? I’m looking for something that works just along the same lines of what Alexander Graham Bell imagined. I’d like to have something I can speak into and say things like, “you mean a lot to me” or, “it’s been great working with you” or perhaps, “I’m sorry” and be entirely present in my words.

I suppose I’ll have to sign up for Facebook again so I can create a group: “OMG, I lost mah phone ag4in. I can haz ur #?” It’ll be epic.

I’m kidding.

Or am I?

I’m glad for your thoughts (and phone recommendations).

Ever wonder why so many of the things you work so hard to do for your partner, family, and customers seem to go unnoticed and unappreciated?

People, by definition, are unable to show gratitude for things they don’t care about.

Consider the example of the hardworking parent and seemingly apathetic teenager: The parent has a list of things she works very hard to provide for her child. Let’s call these things “care points.” For the parent, care points are things like a house to live in, food to eat, transportation, and access to education. The teenager has a very different set of care points. In many cases, the teen cares most about status, social interactions, and a murky pool of worries that plague youth today. Neither parent nor teen is being intentionally unappreciative. They simply care about very different things.

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Are you responsible for your obesity or is placing the Windows 7 Whopper in your mouth the result of a Microsoft and Burger King plot to destroy your health?

Are you responsible for murder or is pulling the trigger just a tiny step after a long line of corporate maneuvers designed to coerce you into buying and using a gun against your will?

Are you responsible for the environmental impacts of your consumer choices or is atmospheric pollution something ExxonMobil should be expected to take care of because they failed to offer you a better energy solution?

Complacency is a vicious beast best fed by an overwhelming quantity of information.

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Here’s a phrase you have probably used before:

“It’s impossible to find good people to hire these days.”

A more honest version is likely:

“I lack the necessary drive and vision needed to take regular people off the street and turn them into productive members of a work environment I actually put very little effort into because I don’t have a real reason to be here, either.

If you care about the work you do and strive to lead a team instead of herding a group of paycheck-gatherers toward Fridays, I don’t think you’ll take my rewrite as harsh. It’s probably something you’ve considered before.

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