Check your e-mail again

Steve Almond writes what he calls “A personal history of e-mail addiction:”

It took me six days to write this piece, during which (according to the History Tab on my Web browser) I visited 371 websites and checked my e-mail 213 times. I knew the numbers weren’t going to be pretty, but I had no idea they’d be quite so ugly.

Let me add, reluctantly, that I have two small children whose emotional and psychological well-being depends, in part, on my being an attentive parent, which is to say a parent who is not actively checking e-mail while bathing them.

Which reminds me: I need to check my e-mail.

Good stuff. He starts with pre-internet Dawn of Creation and describes the slide downward.