Oh - the Christmas (oops Holiday) season is upon us. It is always an interesting time. It seems like everyone
goes into hyper-drive and runs twice as fast trying to get things done - kind
of like those old Star Trek episodes with Kirk pushing the Enterprise to Warp 9 and Mr. Scott saying
"aye captain - she's not going to take it much longer!"
This is one case where I am not sure if technology
helps or just makes us feel like we need to do more. I did all of my shopping
this year without stepping foot in a single mall (definitely good in my book).
Thanks to folks like Amazon, it is now easy to buy virtually everything online
and “drop ship” things to tons of people. Christmas cards are pre-printed,
address labels are all on the computer so the result is that we now can
efficiently send cards to our 5000 dearest friends and not break a sweat.
Even though technology helps us do more - I think
quality (vs quantity) needs to return to the focus. This is one time where we
should all probably try to take a deep breath and reflect a bit on what is
important - and not just try to do more.
The latest greeting card efficiency is
"eCards." Mostly used by companies, these have taken effort to a new
low. How much do I think someone "cares" when they send me an Email
that costs essentially - nothing and took no time to write - wow - one step
above Spam. I feel so special when I get one – not.
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The one thing I will remember about this year will be being "Santa Mark" for my wife's fundraiser. This wasn't your basic Santa gig though -Sharon is in Canine Companions - a great group that raises trained dogs for people with disabilities. They raised funds this year by having folks pay to have their pet’s photo taken with Santa. And I already gave away my role...
At any rate, it was great to step out of the daily routine
and do something that I just would never have pictured myself doing.
So, my suggestion for the Holidays is to tone down
the technology, don’t worry about putting up 12000 lights in the yard, and
spend some quality time with family, friends, and just help out in some way.
We can all go back to technology in a couple of
weeks.
Happy Holidays!
Mark…
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