So there’s this quote, and it’s something like DO TWO THINGS HALFWAY AND FAIL AT BOTH. But it sounds better. Like most things, you can google it. (I didn’t.)

The point being, I’ve been thinking about this concept a lot this month, as I struggle to do two things at once, and mostly suck at each of them. For reference, the two things I am trying to do are a) be here, and b) not be here.

“Here” being the ubiquitous online space where I live much of my life tapping away at this here MacBook Air.

You see, August was going to be a vacation time for me. I was going to take some time off and shut off the computer, and get out the badminton rackets. But then, for a variety of reasons, I couldn’t really sign off completely. (Or, at least, it felt that way.)

So I ended up hanging around. Which means I’ve been semi-vacating and semi-not when it comes to the interwebs. The result, of course, is a confused mess of madness. I have the social events and nanny-less days as if I were on vacation, but the lack of time to really get down to do much work.

I open my email inbox, and then quickly close it out, traumatized by all the starred conversations I have yet to address. I don’t put up an autoresponder (because I’m not REALLY on vacation), and then people wonder why it takes five days to hear back from me.

It’s a problem, see. And it’s not a new one. It’s as old as time, likely, but surely as old as 1995, when AOL starting sending out CDs and we signed up for email addresses that fit the classic pet + street address mid-90s model. (Ratty209, say, or Fluffy1298.)

So, in the name of all things good, I’m officially going to vacate. Next week, that is. I’ll go actually, officially offline and cave in and create one of those auto-responders that annoy my mother. (“Why do you have to have it show up for ME? You don’t work for ME?)

Until then, though, feel free to email me. I may respond right away. It may take five days. It’s anyone’s guess.