I Said No, No, No...

My name is Sean, and I’m an addict.  I’m hooked on a little flashing red light.  In its own silent way, it calls my name, and from wherever I am, I respond, even from the depths of sleep.  When it flashes, I know it.  I can feel it.  It’s the hypnotic strobe of the tiniest red light, but it tells me I have a message.  It tells me that there's something I need to know.  It tells me that the world is still moving.  It’s my blackberry and I’m addicted to it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my relationship with my blackberry lately, mainly because I’m on my way to a strategic planning retreat.  It’s at a beautiful place in the woods of Quebec.  They have bears.  They have moose.  They have comfortable beds and tasty food.  What they don’t have is cell phone reception.  It’s true.  In 2011, there are places that don’t have cell phone reception, and I’m going to one of them.

 I’ve been shaking and sweating about it for the last week.  The idea of that little red light not flashing freaks me out.   On a regular day, if it goes for an hour without flashing, I usually take the battery out and reset it, just to make sure it’s not stuck.  The red light tells me that somebody at work wants something.  It tells me that my kids have something to share.  It tells me that Laura wants to know if I’m coming home for dinner, and if I am, she’d like to know when the hell I plan to arrive.  I've even been known to sneak a look at my blackberry during a flight after the nice ladies at Air Canada have instructed us to shut everything down.  To my knowledge, I haven't yet seriously interfered with those aircraft frequencies.  That little blinking red light is like my pulse.

A bunch of years ago, we rented a cottage near Peterborough, Ontario and lo and behold, no cell phone reception. (Except if I stood on the dock on one foot and held the phone out over the lake and above my head…imagine a chubby dude trying to pull off that yoga pose).  On a daily basis, I was forced to come up with insane reasons to drive to town to check my messages.  I was convinced that I was being pretty smart, coming up with brilliant excuses like needing worms for bait, but I’m sure that Laura wasn’t convinced, and that she knew all along that I was cheating on her with the flashing red light.

clearly NOT me

Two winters ago, we took the kids on a New Year’s cruise.  For the two weeks leading up to it, I was freaking out that I would be completely cut off while floating around the Caribbean.  I was at least hopeful that while in the various ports of call, there would be access to a connection.  You’ll never know how happy I was when I boarded the ship and saw a huge poster proclaiming how proud they were that the Monarch of the Seas had just introduced marine cell phone coverage.  I’m sure the folks that heard my large exhale of relief thought I was just pleased to be starting a relaxing holiday.  In fact, it was almost wholly about the comfort of knowing that I wouldn’t have to go for a week without my little flashing red friend.

Schematics for Ship to Shore Marine Wireless.  It's like the modern day Rosetta Stone.  I don't care how it works, but it's changed peoples' lives.

The experts say that the availability of information and data on a 24/7 basis means that we never shut down;  that we never truly experience the comfort of being fully away from work.  I don’t know who the ‘experts’ talked to about this, but it sure as hell wasn’t me.  In the years before the blackberry entered my life I would go away and worry.  I would think endlessly about work and what was happening there.   I thought about the 200 emails a day that were going unread, and piling up, mocking me, awaiting my return.  For control freaks like me, the blackberry meant freedom.  It meant that I could finally go away for a few days and not have to fixate on everything that I didn’t know about work.   Being away from work for a few days with absolutely no information is anything but comfortable for somebody like me.  (And I know I’m not alone.  Admit it.)

 I love my Blackberry Torch.  It’s the latest, and my favourite, in a long line of RIM devices that have danced through my life over the last ten years.  I sleep with it.  There.  I said it.  Yes, I take my blackberry to bed.  While it’s true that I use it as my alarm clock, I only really discovered the alarm function after I was already taking it to bed.   I have worked in industries where things operate in a 24/7 environment, and for years I’ve had staff working during the night and on the weekend.  That was my excuse for sleeping beside it.  The truth is, I’m a junky.   That silent little flashing red light can wake me out of a sound sleep.   And it knows it.

As a Canadian, my heroes should be Terry Fox, or Rick Hansen, or Roberta Bondar or someone like that.  You know who my heroes are?  Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis.  Those boys from Research in Motion have changed my life.  I know RIM is a little under fire right now because of their recent product launch, but who needs another tablet anyway.  Leave that to Steve Jobs.  What I need is a little handheld device whose flashing red light keeps me going.  It put Waterloo on the map, and it’s given people like me the ability to breathe.

What started out as a simple device that allowed me to work on the fly, and sometimes get away from the office and spend time with my family while keeping on top of things has become the umbilical cord that connects me to the mother ship.  It's not just a phone (in fact, often, that's the last thing it is).  It's not even just the email.  I don't know what I ever did before Blackberry Messenger and texting.  I travel a lot for work now, and my blackberry allows me to keep in touch with my girls and Laura, my friends, and of course what’s happening with customers and people back at the office.  It keeps me sane.  Thanks Mike and Jim.

 So as beautiful as it is (and it is), the thought of sitting in the woods of Quebec, disconnected from my life, with no BBMs or emails, even for 84 hours (are you surprised that I counted?) completely freaks me out.   Maybe it is a sickness.  Or my addiction.  In the immortal words of the late Amy Winehouse, "They tried to make me go to rehab, but I said No, No, No..."   I choose to think of this as evolution, the new way forward.  Whatever it is, if the flashing red light is like my pulse, the absence of the flashing red light feels like a flatline. 

If you're an addict like me, visit www.crackberry.com