Quelle: Darwin, USA

I'M FRESH BACK at work after a five-month hiatus, and the first thingI did was zap about a zillion e-mail messages from my inbox.

Before I'd left the office at the end of April, I vowed to check mye-mail regularly. However, my resolve lasted about two weeks. I felt atwinge of guilt and that was it. People at work, I figured, knew howto reach me by phone and would call with anything of utmostimportance. And besides, a vow doesn't count until you say it out loudto someone.

Over the course of my leave, I was able to stay in the loop in termsof the big picture (i.e., that I still would have a job to come backto), but specifics escaped me. Undoubtedly, there were interestingthings happening that I would have wanted to know about, but I wasable to let them go.

That decision to let go was helped by certain technical difficultiesbeyond my control. In addition to the tortoise-like pace of readinge-mail messages in dial-up, something funky happened to my Internetaccess. I couldn't get to any bookmarked sites through Exploreranymore. Since I didn't feel like typing URLs into the AOL browser, Ifound I'd cut myself off from a good chunk of where I get informationduring my day on the job.