CyberSocial
February 3, 2009Today’s informal agenda included contacting several individuals. My monitor currently sports three open Word.docs, one Excel spreadsheet, one picture folder, yahoo instant messenger, one SMS message via yahoo instant messenger, skype messenger, yahoo news and five explorer browser. One of the explorer browsers has three tabs open to various pages of Facebook. Basically, my computer is as cluttered as my house and my head.
The point of the digital laundry list is that much of my computer is dedicated to keeping in touch with real live people. The people I live with, the people I’m related to, the people I’ve been friends with and the people I only know via online games or blogs. When I want to contact one of those people, I have several electronic options to do so. I send it on my time, they get to it in their time and eventually communication happens.
I have sung praises to the age we live in, but I have to wonder, is this contributing to my neurosis? Neuroses? I feel like I’m managing my mild agoraphobia and various anxieties. I’ve even considered that upping my communication with friends and family might be helping me improve. But if a good 80% of my socializing is via email, instant message or message board, does it count as socializing? Am I becoming too dependent on electronic filters?
Last night I began to compose a message via facebook to a friend of mine on the east coast. I’m working on a project and I thought she might have some excellent input. I ended up giving up for the night when it became obvious I was spending so much time giving her background information before I could ask what her thoughts were. My plan was to pick up the message in the morning with a fresh brain.
To be fair, my friend is an incredibly active and busy individual. So sending a message that she could respond to when her schedule permits does make sense. Yet, as I began to flesh out the message today, I had the aforementioned thoughts and before I could get anxious, I was dialing her number. As her voice mail picked up and I squished the “leave a message” anxiety down, I mentally laughed at myself.
Chances are good that she won’t have time to call me back. It’s not very important that I get her input specifically. I don’t feel good that I called instead of sending a message. She could be too busy for the message too. All I’ve done is save myself twenty minutes of typing time. If she does call me back, I’m thinking the call would take about ten minutes tops. What if she calls when I’m unavailable? Crap. I’ll stick to emails next time.
Yikes- you’re talking about me, huh? And I never called you back. THAT is just plain unacceptable.
I suffer the same anxieties, which cause me not to use the phone. At all. For example, what if I call when that person is not there and then I am in phone tag hell? What if I call but I don’t end up having the extended amount of time needed for the call? Will getting off the phone “early” make that person feel like they aren’t important? The sad truth is that both action AND inaction cause these anxieties to come true, and it ends up being a self fulfilling prophecy.
I am busy, but that is no excuse to avoid returning people’s phone calls. I am truly ashamed of myself, and I apologize. I just don’t make people a priority on a daily basis, and then things get backed up. A week passes and I realize that I never replied to the phone call I received the previous week, and I am too embarrassed to respond. Vicious cycle. Ick.
Digital media makes things so much easier for me. I can write responses on my schedule and take as long as I need. I get to multi-task without offending anyone, which allows me to keep a high energy lifestyle. On the other hand, digital communication makes things harder, because now I am in touch with HUNDREDS of people instead of just dozens. And everyone expects responses to be returned immediately, and much of the time I just don’t have the energy to engage that often. Even worse, digital technology has allowed me to hide from the phone and let that interpersonal anxiety fester.
Maybe I would be better off without email, and Facebook, and blogs, and texting, because then I would be forced to use more personal communication to relate to others. It would mean that I would have to limit the quantity of friendships I maintain. But each friendship would have more investment. I have been grappling with these thoughts for a while, so thanks for blogging about this and allowing me to express them (I think I am going to post this on my blog too- see link above…)
As a PostScript- Today is the 25th and I am just now getting to my RSS feeds (which is how I found this blog- I subscribe! So, in some ways I am paying attention…)