Sssshhhh!!!

Don't tell Donna.

I'm not supposed to be doing this.

I'm supposed to be relaxing.

I'm supposed to be on vacation.

I'm not supposed to be working.

But I can't help it.

I'm Canadian.

A recent, unattributed study indicated that Canadians are 57 per cent more likely than anyone else to work through their holidays.

While some of the holiday workers cited love of their occupations and another sizeable number claimed they feared they might lose their jobs if they didn't put in the extra effort, a solid majority - 57 per cent - said they put in the additional time during their holidays because they felt a duty to their employers to complete projects that they did not have time to finish prior to signing off for their vacations, and besides, their computers allowed them to easily work from home.

Here's the thing about unattributed studies, though: a recent study of unattributed studies showed that 57 per cent of them are bogus, bolstered by made-up statistics.

And interestingly, the most often used bogus figure appears to be 57 per cent.

I wouldn't know about those who study our work habits and employment records, but I do have some firsthand information about folks who studied leisure time and the future long ago... okay, not all that long ago, depending on who you are and how long you consider to be long.

To me, my university days were long ago - back in the early-to-mid-1970s.

Computers were beginning to be a really big deal then.

Indeed, in the physical sense, they were a far bigger deal then than they are now. A computer incapable of as much as your average desktop model today filled entire buildings - note the plural: "buildings." And the buildings were not small.

In 1972 I bought a "pocket" calculator - we had very large pockets back then - for $99 (no tax for students - it was before HST). That's $554.76, according to the Bank of Canada inflation index, and I'd have to add HST.

But it was phenomenal.

State of the art.

It could add, subtract, multiply, and divide. AND it had a memory button, calculated the reciprocal with a single punch of a finger, and the percentage button automatically moved the decimal over two places for me so I didn't have to do that in my head!

No, kids, I couldn't talk into it... or at least, if I did, no one would hear me beyond a few feet away.

But it was a computer, and its promise for the future held us in thrall.

Soon, the computer would do everything for us - not just add, subtract, multiply, and divide. Even beyond moving the decimal over two places to give us percentages.

Everything.

But there was a scary side, too.

The computer would soon do so much for us that some folks, ill equipped for all the extra leisure time it would create, would literally be bored to death.

And to prepare us for the prospects of that horrific future, there were extra-credit courses on how to survive the inevitable computer-generated leisure assault.

And I'm 57 per cent sure that the future they were talking about is today.