More and more these days I am starting to realize how the closeness of my relationships with so many of my friends and family members is contingent upon one crucial factor: how they choose to communicate.
I’m not talking about feelings (see my last post for that), or their vocabulary skillz, or their ability to articulate themselves. I’m talking about how they literally prefer to communicate, technologically.
Personally? I loathe the telephone. I communicate with friends, family, clients, and associates all day, every day by text message, email, Facebook, Twitter, chat, Words With Friends chat, and actual letters. In fact, I have an awesome pen pal relationship going with my dad right now via the postal service that has helped us get to know each other a lot better, and it’s been pretty sweet.
But the phone? No.
This phone is an exact replica of the one
I grew up with in Western Massachusetts
in the 70s. It’s a paperweight now.
I was never a big fan to begin with, but for so many years it was a necessary evil. It was the only way, really, of quickly connecting with someone who wasn’t standing right in front of you. Because I moved 3,000 miles away from home and now have friends and family spread out all over the world, being able to communicate with people long-distance is important.
As a writer (a way of being and not just a job), I naturally gravitate toward communicating in writing. And as a neurotic shy person, the phone makes me highly anxious. First of all, anyone who tells you it’s “easier to just pick up the phone” is lying. Small talk sucks my soul dry every time I try to connect with someone reallyquick to find out what time the movie is playing, or whatever. Also, personally, I type incredibly fast. I can write a novella quicker than most people can have a basic phone call about remembering to bring home milk.
Beyond the convenience factor, I find the phone unsettling. The ringing of a phone shoots like a bolt of arsenic through my nervous system. When my phone rings (and actually, it never rings, because I never turn the ringer on, but it does light up and command my attention if it’s in my peripheral vision) I get distracted. Distracted is not good. Distracted means that I stop doing whatever I was doing and a few of my brain cells die with a silent scream.
Allow me to quote Waylon Lewis in a recent article* he wrote for Elephant Journal: “Text me. Email me. If you call, I won’t answer if I don’t recognize the number. If I do recognize the number, I won’t talk to you—I’m in the middle of something 99% of the time.” I, too, am almost never in a place/frame of mind/mood to answer the phone. 99% of the time, I am:
- Writing
- Reading
- Otherwise working in such a way that requires creative space
- Hanging out with someone, in person
- At a movie
- Doing yoga
- Hiking
Under none of the above circumstances would I ever answer the phone. Occasionally, very occasionally, I am driving. If I’m driving, I may answer the phone, if:
- I have adequate reception (which is almost never; I have AT&T) AND
- I’m in the mood AND
- I’m not listening to a really awesome Moth podcast AND
- I have a pair of headphones in the car
Luckily for me, I live in a beautiful woodsy part of Mill Valley — a sweet little town on the outskirts of San Francisco — where cell phones get zero bars. Sometimes I get a half a bar, which conveniently, is just enough to text. It’s ideal, really. I sometimes go days without even noticing that I’ve missed a call. I’m not that awesome at checking voicemails, unfortunately, but I’m working on it.
* FYI read Waylon’s very short piece on Elephant and scroll down to read the nasty little comment exchange I engaged in where so-and-so insisted that “this generation’s” preference for new technology versus the phone is a symbol of our disenfranchised attitude toward community and connection, and I said wah? How does that even make sense? How is talking on the telephone equated with community and connection any more than Facebook/email/texting/what-have-you? At the end of the day, the phone is a technical medium for communication that a) is not in-person and therefore is handicapped in terms of real connection and b) is frought with lots of issues and is c) archaic and outdated!
P.S. although I am attached at the hip to my iPhone, I average about 45 minutes a month of actual talk time. If I had my way, I’d sign up for a plan that didn’t allow talking at all.
