I came off the on-call rota on Friday and spent the whole of Saturday not realising why I felt strange. It took until the afternoon to place it: I wasn't braced. No phone face-up on the table, no half-glance at it every time I sat down, no quiet arithmetic about how long it would take to get to a laptop if the pager went.
You stop noticing the weight of it because it becomes the baseline. The pager doesn't have to actually go off to cost you something. It's the low background hum of being available, the way a part of your attention is always parked on the possibility, even on a Sunday, even at dinner, even asleep.
So this weekend I made coffee that went cold because I forgot about it for the right reasons. I read most of a book in one sitting, which I haven't done in months. I left the house without working out the mobile signal first. None of it is remarkable and that's exactly the point.
On-call is part of the job and I'm not complaining about it. But it's worth occasionally feeling the contrast, just so you remember the hum is there the rest of the time. The week starts again tomorrow. For now the phone can stay in the other room.