Following our daughter’s August wedding in Oregon, my wife and I took a few extra days off. Our goal being to simply unplug for a bit of time. That concept became a fantasy the minute we settled into our hotel room and sought to charge our myriad of devices.

Searching for a power source, I had to move the bed to move the nightstand away from a wall to find one half of a usable outlet. The next night I inadvertently knocked the charger plug out of that outlet. In the morning all my devices were dead. Initial whoa and woe; but a morning of complete freedom fully unplugged.

Author Anne Lamott wrote, “Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.”

Once recharged (figuratively and literally), I popped in my headphones and I swear, the first song that came up on Spotify was Eric Clapton’s Tears in Heaven. Yes, from his MTV Unplugged special.

Late that night, I had another unplugged (more like unhinged) experience in our hotel room. After laying my head on the pillow, I heard an irritating mechanical sound that made it difficult to fall sleep. The noise was coming from an empty mini refrigerator hidden in a cabinet. Exasperated, I moved more furniture and unplugged that fridge. So … it is possible to unplug. But it takes effort.