Wednesday, February 20, 2008

The Perils of a Tiny Piece of Fruit...

The Blackberry. It's such a tiny piece of fruit. Beautiful. Delicious. Sweet. Healthy. A blackberry is actually composed of many smaller fruits called drupes and has many health benefits. You can enjoy it in pies, tarts, on ice cream or in a bowl with other berries. When I take cruises I usually order a bowl of mixed berries after dinner every night. I like blackberry jam on wheat toast. I even like to eat plain ripe blackberries with a nice glass of Cabernet. But somehow I have become addicted. And not in a good way. But not the kind you see in the top left photo...
The Blackberry. It's a pocket-sized piece of technology. Handsome. Sleek. Useful. Convenient. But that, my friends is where my story changes. The Blackberry has become an extension of my office. A constant connection to work. Always available. Always connected. It can lead to obsessive-compulsive behavior, checking e-mail constantly. That flashing-alternating red and green light, taunting me. Calling to me. Constant temptation to read the next e-mail coming in. Unlike the fruit, this Blackberry is not healthy at all. Wherever I go, my Blackberry goes with me. At my company there is an unwritten expectation that people with a Blackberry check e-mail all day. Weeknights. Weekends. Be constantly available. On a typical day I receive between 200 and 250 new e-mails everyday. I simply can't keep up with the volume, particularly when I am away from my desk in meetings all day long. So I check my Blackberry all day long, when I first wake up, on my way to meetings, any free moment and before I go to sleep at night. So to me, it has become a particularly perilous piece of fruit. I long for the days when a Blackberry was just a piece of fruit.
-Rick Rockhill

16 comments:

Diane J Standiford said...

Sometimes an apple is just an apple.

Anonymous said...

At the last company I was with meeting protocol called for Blackberry breaks on any meeting lasting more than 20 minutes! A hopeless addiction I think!

Jeni said...

Boy, as addicted as I am to just blogging, checking my reader, etc., a Blackberry would not be a good thing for me to have - unlike the other blackberry, which is nutritious as well as absolutely delicious! Goes great on top of a rather bland, but good, baked custard recipe I have for a Swedish dish called "Panakaka." (You'r actually supposed to eat it with lingonberries but they aren't exactly in abundance at the grocery stores, ya know.)

Anonymous said...

oh gosh you poor thing. I say switch to Strawberries.

Desert Songbird said...

My hubby has become addicted to his Blackberry, too. *sigh*

Canadian flake said...

Wow that sure sounds stressful....I have the opposite problem...I long to have a job where someone cares if I live or die...

Hang in there...

lime said...

eeesh, that sounds horrible.

Empress Bee (of the high sea) said...

i thought i smelled the word "cruise" in there! ha ha ha

smiles, bee
xoxoxoxoxooxoxxo

Michael Colvin said...

You should ask your employer to pay you for all the time you spend checking it.

Blackberries, (the device) are hateful things and a scourge to all humanity.

Burn em all, I say!

Anonymous said...

Let's get this straight.
Pop-Tarts aren't blackberries.
I'm not sure they are even food.
I'd rather eat sugary emails than those.

Anonymous said...

I read about a blackberry outage a week or so ago. Did that affect you? I would think that had to be tough.

Maggie Moo said...

I don't know if it's just here in Boston, but people have started calling it "crackberry".

I'm glad I don't have one.

In other news, you were in my dream last night. We were both vacationing in the same place just as a coincidence and we were having drinks by the pool. It was fun. You're a cool guy. ;)

kenju said...

I share your addiction to blackberry fruits, and my daughter is addicted to the other kind. In Europe last year, she woke me up at night checking the Blackberry under the covers at 2 am.

CRUSTY MOM-E said...

I'll take the blackberry fruit over the blackberry treo,..and pass me a side of iphone too!

Always,
Elizabeth

Desert Songbird said...

Rick, put down the crackberry and check out this tag:

The Ice Box

WAT said...

Shoot man, I already deal with addictions to my laptop, iPod, and cell phone, and to have to add more junk like this to my life?

HELL NO! NO THANKS! Imma stay away from THIS Blackberry and the iPhone as long as I can or they'll just consume my life.

U poor thing!

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