Unplugging: Its not just for CVC speakers

On a recent Friday morning, the alarm went off at its normal time and I threw the blanket over my head to try for a few more minutes of sleep before the inevitable stumbling to the coffee pot and commencement of the workday.

“You don't have to go to work today,” my husband mumbled.

I thought it was wishful thinking-as in, “You don't really have to go to work today ... do you?”

I sighed and said, “I know. But at least it's Friday.”

“No,” he insisted, “you don't have to go to work today. Or Monday. You have to pack.”

Now I was awake. “What do you mean? Where are we going?”

This was the Friday before the weekend of our one-year wedding anniversary. I knew he'd been cooking something up, but I had no idea what.

Turns out my husband had contacted a fellow dvm360 editor through Facebook, who had cleared the time off with my boss and asked the rest of the team to keep an eye on me to make sure I was in OK shape to be whisked away for a couple of days unexpectedly. The only person who didn't know all this was going on was me.

As the whole scheme became clear (slowly) in my sleep-fuzzed brain, my first reactions were delight-and panic. I surreptitiously tried to log in to my work email account to make sure nothing was lurking in there that had to be addressed before we headed for the airport and then the mountains of Colorado.

No luck. An extra security measure had been added to my email account and I wouldn't be able to get access until I logged in from my work computer.

Oh well. The dvm360 group is an awesome and amazing team, so if any disasters came up, I knew they'd be able to handle them just fine.

Once my husband and I arrived at our beautiful cabin just outside Rocky Mountain National Park, we scoped out the wireless situation.

No cell service. Wireless Internet provided by the cabin management was spotty when it worked at all.

The result? We were forced to unplug (see our cover story featuring Eric Garcia). We ended up focusing all our attention on the beauty surrounding us and on each other, looking back at our first year together and forward to (we trust) many more to come.

Besides a simply amazing anniversary experience (thank you, sweet husband), the unplugged weekend provided another unexpected gift: When I arrived at work the following Tuesday, I was rarin' to go. Projects I'd been stuck on came together beautifully. Ideas flowed like silk. Frustrations had evaporated.

So read our digital sabbatical article in this issue. Then find some time in this magical-but-hectic season of the year for a bit of quiet from the noise of technology-an “unplugged moment,” in the words of Garcia. Your life, your work-your soul-will thank you.