As you start to read this article, I will probably be stuffing my travel bags with clothes, gallons of SPF30 sunblock ( I haven’t gotten out much this summer), and at least a couple handles of USB cables and chargers. Not so long ago, my annual vacation coincided with my annual “time to unplug.” That’s not happening so much these days.

I don’t need your condescending looks either, which I always seem to get when I travel to someplace remote and arrive with a bad full of tech. ”Poor man,” I hear. “He’s hooked and can’t unplug.”

Well, it used to be so easy. Just 10 years ago you could simply leave an out-of-office message, set the filter to “delete all” and enjoy your time away from the office. Then smart phones arrived, which just opened Pandora’s Box. These days disconnecting is as impossible as it is complicated.

Some of you literalists will say: ”no, it isn’t. Just leave the gadgets behind and go.” Sorry, it just isn’t that simple.

Take photography for example. Ten years ago you’d go on a vacation, shot a couple of rolls of film, and then do absolutely nothing until you got back and dropped the film off to be developed. Now, my camera is also my phone, which means I now have to start – ok, continue – to ignore the people who call because they didn’t see my out of office message. It’s the price you pay for photos in the digital age. And for the record, I’m sorry, but if there is anything more annoying than being on vacation and having someone call you about work, it’s having to repeatedly ignore someone who can’t take a hint and keeps calling you over and over in the hope that you’ll pick up.

As yes, I know there are camera’s that don’t actually connect to the Internet, but what’s the point? I have a digital camera solely for the purpose of being able to brag to everyone about where I am. Posting a month old photo of myself on vacation is nothing compared to the sheer thrill of sending your friends a picture of you sitting on the edge of the South China Sea sipping a drink with an umbrella in it while they slave away in front of their computers in some poorly air-conditioned cubicle.

There is also the problem of keeping track of where I am going. I don’t remember what my travel plans are. Why would I? I booked two months ago and then emailed them to myself so I wouldn’t have to remember. Ten years ago, I had a Day Runner to write this stuff all down in so when I arrived, I could retrieve it. The days of the Day Runner are long gone. Now it’s located in an app on my phone.

There is also the problem of books. I’d like to be able to cram my bags full of books just so I can leave my iPad behind, until I realize that I haven’t bought any actually paper books since the Harry Potter series ended. Even if I do have a few books I want to re-read, even two or three take up more room than my iPad or Samsung. Plus, let’s be frank, books can’t stream live baseball games as I sit on the beach getting skin cancer.

So no, I can’t just leave my gadget behind and unplug. They’ve become a part of almost everything I do on a daily basis, whether I like it or not.

The problem these days isn’t the gadgets; it’s the never ending steam of information. I don’t need to get away from the technology that is making my life better. I need to get way from the never ending steam of – more often that note – trivial crap that’s I’ve read only to confirm that I was really trivial crap.

I have a constant, twitching eye on Twitter for just that reason. This is on top of the news feeds, email accounts and never ending bombardment of press releases, which is frequently followed by someone who doesn’t believe our email system works. Yes, I got your @#!%ing press release. Stop calling me.

It’s stuff like than makes you really need a vacation.

So, when you see me on the beach with my Bluetooth, and my iPad and Samsung Note II, it’s not that I haven’t learned to unplug. Technology isn’t at fault. What I have learned is that some things never change, such as that hell is still other people.

True, these are people who are just as deeply hooked into the system as I usually am. The crucial difference is that for the next two weeks, I won’t be.

Follow Scott on Twitter at @ScottShuey