As you may have guessed from yesterday’s post, I am at this very moment trying to tear myself away from life as I know it and suspend operations for a while.
True, the world will not stop while I do. Ned and Ted and Len and Edna and Clarissa and Elizabeth and Otto will still need things immediately. The Flute Reamer Division will still have those transition issues. Bob may need a speech or two. The IR department will still worry about its upcoming presentation in Bophutswana. But all that will have to go on without me, I most dearly hope.
Yes, I will have my BlackBerry. I will do my best to look at it only twice a day. The rest of the time it will be in a drawer. I find this better than imagining the thousands of idiotic e-mails and perhaps 10 important ones that will be piling up during the interregnum.
And yes, a few people will know where I am, my assistant Beverly being the most important. It will be up to her to figure out what’s worth bothering me for. She is aware of Bing’s Law, which, as you may remember, states that every minute of work on a vacation requires one full hour for the re-establishment of proper mental equilibrium. Thus, a ten minute conference call demands a full 10 hours of recovery time. Longer than that? You do the math.
I will, of course, have my little laptop with me, so who knows. Maybe I’ll drop you a line now and then. In any event, I’ll see you all after the 4th. Don’t work too hard while I’m away, okay?