For most of my life, I’ve been deeply involved in technology. My father taught me GW-BASIC when I was five. I had traced Smalltalk down to the bytecodes by the time I was twelve and from there to 68k assembly a year later. I insisted on disassembling most of the objects we had in the house in an attempt to figure out how they worked, and to build my own (which, unfortunately, tended not to work as well as the originals). In many, many ways, technology has defined me for most of my life.

Yet at the same time, it’s been a love-hate relationship. As much as I love technology, there’s little question that it’s made my life more and more hellish. Simply keeping track of the incoming deluge of instant messages, emails, tweets, phone calls, Facebook pokes, and more, has gotten to the point where most of my day seems to be taken up entirely by nothing but trying to keep in touch with everyone. Living in New York, the problem has simply gotten worse and worse. The constant noise. The constant pollution. The unceasing stream of needy women who want my body. Not only am I crushed by people trying to get in touch with me; I’m crushed by those who succeed.

Well, I’ve had it.

I’ve long respected the Amish. They have tight-knit groups, strong social standards, and manage to be wonderfully self-sufficient. In an age when the rest of the world cannot do anything but focus on drugs, money, and late-model DeLoreans, they represent everything that could be right with the world, a harmony between intellectual and spiritual, between man and nature, between sacred and profane. But there’s a problem: the Amish are Christian. I’m Jewish. So, I’ve done the only logical thing: I’ve decided to convert.

I’ll be getting my affairs in order over the next several weeks, selling most of my possessions to give to the bishop, and learning the Ordnung of whichever fellowship I end up deciding to join. I’ll try to blog about the experience as much as possible so that anyone else who opts to follow my same path knows how to easily do so. If you’re in the NYC area and wish to join me for key parts of my quest, I’d strongly encourage you to join my twitter feed (username dblywteef) so that you can tag along easily. Feel free to ask, either here or in email, any questions you have about why I’ve decided this is the only reasonable course. I’ll get back to you as quickly as possible, but please understand if I’m a bit slow to respond to work and personal reasons.

I guess that’s it. It’s been wonderful being on the forefront of technology for the past twenty years, but I think it’s high time that I took a break and returned to the finer things in life.

Thanks everyone for your kind support. I’ll see you on the flip side.

Nota bene: This article was written on April 1st. Please reflect on that date before responding.