O BlackBerry, Where Art thou?

A plasticky sounding vibration on my wrist gets my attention, followed in canon by alerts on my phone and the open tab on my browser.

It has only been 75 days since I accepted the temporary mission of keeping this ship on course. The ship is the English department of my university. I am not alone on my quest like Odysseus was, thankfully. This ship needs two captains to avoid the dangers, for Scylla and Charybdis have modern forms that require careful navigation to avoid.

My watch and phone give me a preview of the message. Do I dare open it and mark it as read? What if it is urgent? Is it a 5-minute affair, a “CTRL+C CTRL+V CTRL+ENTER” situation? Would I be sacrificing a few of my precious minutes to the Calabrian shoal, or would this steer me in the direction of a whirlpool that would suck up more time than necessary?

We should all be circumspect when dealing with emails. I keep mine colour-coded and never mix personal and professional inboxes. With caution, I gingerly pull down the shade on my phone. The Siren promises to reveal the future.

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