xmlns:og='http://ogp.me/ns#' Yeah. Good Times.: Blogging has made me flaky and anti social

Friday, June 24, 2011

Blogging has made me flaky and anti social


Back in the olden days... when I was in high school... probably before some of you were even born.... whatever.... there were a limited number of ways you could use to contact people. You could send them a letter, write them a note and slip it into their locker at school, you could stop by their house or you could call them. If they weren't home when you called, hopefully somebody would answer and take a message, OR they might have an answering machine, if you were lucky.

Enter computers and now you have email on top of the phone message. This is actually better, IMO; you can email somebody any time of the day or night and you don't have to think on your feet all the time. Except... when you send an email and they don't respond.... did they actually get it? I hate that; I've always hated that. It's rude to not respond when somebody sends you an email; at least let them know you got it. As such, I've always made enormous effort to respond to every single email I ever got. Even if it just said ":)" It's possible I annoyed people with that, but at least my conscience was clear!

Now enter cell phones and we have a 2nd telephone method of contacting somebody, along with text messages. We're up to about 5 or 6 at this point; still pretty manageable, I think, especially since some of them replace some of the other ones.

We progress through the years and different computerized versions of contact are added. Chats, message boards, AOL, IRC (I never used it but I'm going to mention it here so that you think I'm cool). Then MySpace, Facebook, Twitter.....

Now that I've started blogging I seem to have added an infinite number of methods to my "ways to contact me" list, about 1,000 more people trying to do so and DAMN it's getting hard to manage! I've started becoming unable to respond to everything the way I used to, and now I'M the rude one!

I hate it!!!

I'm going to list them all for you, in the unlikely event that you feel like feeling sorry for me right now:
  1. Home phone
  2. Cell phone
  3. Text message
  4. Blackberry Messenger
  5. Personal email
  6. Blogger email
  7. Professional email
  8. Message board #1 private message
  9. Message board #2 private message
  10. Facebook message
  11. Facebook wall
  12. Twitter @ message
  13. Twitter DM
  14. Y.GT. Blog comment
  15. Variety of chats or IMs that I rarely use but are still a way to contact me so I'm calling them all just one way
Fifteen! Fifteen different ways to get a hold of me, and fifteen places I need to check to see if I need to get back to somebody. I'm probably missing some, too, but I can't think of any more right now.

I don't mean to complain ("yeah, suuuuuuuuure you don't, Jill" is what you're thinking right now), but ever since I've been blogging it's become too much for me! I've started to become the people that I hate; the ones that don't respond when you contact them. I hate that!! I don't want to be like those people!!

So.... if you've contacted me by any of these methods, or any method I didn't even list, and I didn't respond.... OH MY GOD I'M SO SORRY. I don't mean to be rude. I really don't! I've just managed to get in a little over my head with all of this, it seems. I get overwhelmed and when I get overwhelmed it's easier to just do nothing than to try to push through it all. Please try again, using a different method?