Indeed, what WILL we do without our vanities?

I thought that bit was just the best few sentences I'd heard in a long while. But it's stuck with me, digging up an old question I still haven't answered:

What would you do if you didn't do what you do? or, more concretely,
Should I bring a computer on my travels?

In the one corner, we have most of the world, Csikszentmihalyi, and Wilber: get more complex. Do the things you do, do them well, integrate them with your being. In the other corner, we have ascetics. (well, they're wrong, anyway.)

Here's an answer I kind of like: keep spinning all those plates that you're spinning, but take periodic breaks from your vanities, check in, regroup, make sure you want to be spinning them all.