Once upon a time, when you went on vacation you cancelled the newspapers, turned on the answering machine, took the cat to the vet and turned off the air conditioner.  You knew that you could, if absolutely necessary access your answering machine remotely (although you probably wouldn’t) and that any big news would reach you somehow, no matter where you were.  Plus, you could pick up a local paper at your vacation spot to peruse over coffee one lazy morning.

But now, when you go away, emails pile up, Facebook notifications pile up, tweets twitter all around, and the Open Salon bloggers keep writing and writing.  And once you are behind, there is no way in hell to keep up.  Especially with limited internet access and other things to do—like walk on the beach and sit by the water.  Even with a Blackberry, which means you never ever have to miss a call or a “crucial” email, the stuff that piles up and is there waiting for you when you return is completely overwhelming.

There is indeed no possible way to catch up, either.

And when life has thrown you a few major curveballs and your writing and reading have taken a back seat, by the time you get back from said much needed and well deserved vacation, you are so overwhelmed by what you might have missed that you just assume you have missed everything important and go on with your life.

That said, if I have missed anything I shouldn’t have, do let me know.  Because there is just no way for me to actually have a life and read all the posts I was invited to read and should have (perhaps) commented upon.

Just let me know if I somehow missed the end of the world as we know it.  If so, it hasn’t made its way to my small burg yet.

And my vacation, which seems like years ago, was wondrous, thank you.