I disconnect by just forgetting to bring my phone with me when I venture out from home. I'm absent minded. I have no one that I need to be "on duty" for anyway.

Periods of disconnecting from the net can be seen as a good thing for mental health. Information overload can make one batty. I don't set a goal to disconnect, however. Ever since childhood, I've just been absent minded. I often leave home and forget to bring my smartphone with me.

That's okay because I don't need to be on call 24/7. I'm not working a job that requires being "on duty." I don't have a family, or close loved ones, who expect me to "be there" for every little crisis that comes up in their lives.

I do have lots of friends and community connections, but they can wait.

When I was a child, I was so absent minded that I forgot to bring the new lunch box, my parents bought for me, home from school. It got lost at the school.

They bought me another one and I accidentally left that at the school also. After that, they refused to get another lunch box for me. They still packed a lunch for me, but it was in a disposable paper sack.

I often wonder how today's kids can hang on, so tightly, to their smartphones, when I couldn't even hang onto a lunchbox.

Unlike some other post war baby boomers, I don't have a vintage, "early 1960s" lunchbox to show for it on eBay.