Call Me...Maybe?

I hate the phone.  Let me just put that right out there.  Oh sure, I call my sisters and girlfriends to chat, usually when I’m driving or cruising the grocery store aisles.   I like a good old catch-up convo as much as the next gal.  But when expediency is called for, the phone can suck time like a black hole. 


Set aside my skepticism at clutching a mobile device to our brains or the loony appearance of those blinking Vulcan blue earpieces.  What I hate about the phone when conducting business is the socially required chitchat, the lubrication, the “how are the kids” banter that doesn’t allow for cutting to the chase.  Wasn’t this precisely why Al Gore created the Internet --- so we could all be more efficient?


But lately it seems that even email is failing me.  I’m drowning in the sheer volume, suffocating in the volleys. Some conversations and decisions seem to require so many back and forths, so much cc-ing and reply-all-ing, that my knickers are twisted.  We are a society of over- communicators.  We text while we paint our toenails, we tweet while we’re getting frisky.  We feel a sense of rising panic if we haven’t responded to someone in 24 hours.

Good old-fashioned email can plunge you into hot water, if you’re not careful.   The written word lacks tone or inflection, there’s no indication that you are joshing (other than that silly smiley face symbol). Even a well-intentioned breezy missive can sound like you are dead serious, and a serious email can read as if a razor is poised at your wrist.  


Ooops.  It seems I’ve just offended someone with my sloppily dashed email.  But OMG, WTF?  I’d used LOL, added a smiley face and plenty of exclamation marks to lighten it all up.  Sigh.  More time spent on clarification, apologies and back–pedaling.  Now a phone call to hear our voices, palpate the hurt, define the intentions and un-do the damage.  And finally, are we good?  We’re good. OK. Thumbs up.  We like each other on Facebook again. 

Suddenly I’m nostalgic for my old black cord phone, the one I pulled into my childhood bedroom to whisper about cute boys.   A phone call back then had weight, carried a certain importance.  It was almost the equivalent of a written letter now, as quaint as composing your Santa list from the Sears & Roebuck catalogue. 

One of my favorite Nora Ephron essays is “The Six Stages of E-Mail.”  In the first stage she describes her excitement and infatuation at the new method of communication.  This gives way to her confusion over excessive spam for retail and personal growth opportunities like penis enlargement.  Note - my husband once changed his email address for this reason and let’s not go into the understandable insecurities this can breed when you’re a male recipient.  In the next stage, Ephron is overwhelmed by her email and finally the last section is simply entitled “Call Me.” 

 

 

Clicking on my email icon is like powering up a ball machine on a tennis court.  My returns are faster and the replies now shorter.  Anyone who emails me has to live with the fact that I don’t take the time to spell check. It’s my tiny stab at insurrection, a minimal but important time saving device.  To me, email is the written equivalent of a verbal response.  Of course there are exceptions, but you know you’re a friend if you have to read my messages fone- et-i- call-ee.

Sadly, from the looks of my inbox, email is here to stay.  And after years of attempting to be a nice, polite girl, dutifully answering even unsolicited emails, I’m getting ruthless.  I’m teaching myself to resist UFR (unnecessary further response) and to press delete when I see the FNOD’s (Forward to ten friends Now - Or Die a mysterious death within 24 hours).  I no longer send replies that say “great”, “OK,” “done,”  “thank you” or “really?” It’s liberating.  And frankly, do these people even remember they had the last word?  Did they care?  And don’t get me started on RAA (reply-all abuse).  Emailing someone is like accessing porn on the Internet.  Even a child can do it.  

I’m not sure exactly how I’ll solve this.  It’s unrealistic to assume I can throw my devices out the car window and walk away from the burning wreckage.  But I’m working on a healthier balance. 

But the next time we’re trying to set up a lunch date and its taking seven replies, don’t be surprised if you hear the phone ring.  That will be me— and please don’t be offended if I fail to enquire about your parent’s health. 




www.leewoodruff.com   facebook.com/leemwoodruff   twitter@LeeMWoodruff 

EMAIL BANKRUPTCY

Help me.  I’m drowning.  Drowning in emails.  Each day a new tsunami of sometimes meaningful, mostly useless, trivial, occasionally important and often spammy  correspondence washes ashore on my laptop like ocean detritus and it’s my job to pick through it.  My friends are even hawking Viagra, although some claim their addresses were “hacked.”  Times are tough. 

 

All of this emailing is designed to keep me from real human interaction.   And so I go about my day like I’m playing a Chucky Cheese arcade game of Whack-a-Mole.  Knock one email back and two others pop up. Oprah-Deepak, help!  How can I live in the moment?  How can I even get outside my house?

It’s so quaint to think that in college I typed my papers on a manual typewriter.  Liquid paper saved me. Of course I’m the same generation that had a “smoking section” on airplanes.  Let’s really think about that, like you were “protected” in row 9 if the smoking section started at 10.  We all walked off those flights smelling like the human ashtrays in “Mad Men.”

 

Back yonder when people sent letters, (now quaintly referred to as snail mail) no one could reach you at all times.  Phones were attached to walls and cords had to be dragged into bedrooms for private hushed convos.  The dreaded mental condition of “email anxiety” had not yet been invented.  This is the social media equivalent of constipation, of knowing your emails and texts are backed up.  No wonder we are all walking around like we have an anvil on our backs, plinking at our devices, head down, oblivious to the blue sky and sunshine.   Somehow it’s imperative that we answer RIGHT NOW - right at the restaurant, right in the middle of the coffee break, just as we are boarding the train.  Why bother to go out at all? We all live a life continually undone, perpetually waiting for a reply.

 

Increasingly common is the sight of two young people dining out, each muted and bent by “blackberry hunch.”  That’s just downright sad.  Sadder than two old people chewing quietly with nothing to say at a Denny’s buffet.

 

Some of you are asking, why can’t you take a day or two or three and just not look at emails?  Lay down your devices, you say.  That’s called a wilderness vacation.  But to just do this in the midst of a workweek is a pretty tough thing to accomplish.  And it has serious payback ramifications.  Perhaps you can relate to the feeling of having gone out on a great date with your spouse or partner.  You turn the key in the door, flush with laughter and the escape from routine, the promise of a little nookie to come, and WHAM – all the lights are on, the babysitter hasn’t yet put the kids to bed, the place is trashed and the dinner dishes are congealed on the stove.  You’re nodding. That’s what would happen if I just “let it go.”  All the good feelings get erased in a nanosecond.

 

So here is my big idea.

 

I’m filing for email bankruptcy.  This is not a novel idea.  I remember reading an article about it years ago- that was before my emails climbed to unprecedented heights.  I thought the author was a whiner, he was inefficient, clearly he didn’t have a balance in his life or his priorities straight.  Now I think he was brilliant—a prophet before his time.

 

About a month ago I left my iPhone in a restaurant. No Good Samaritan emerged from this story – it was New York City for Pete’s sake.  But whatever the new owner of my phone did that night, the next morning most of my inbox was mysteriously erased.  After some panicked moments and two hours on the Apple help line, I came to the realization it was gone.  And all at once a light went on.  “So what?” said the light. Big honking deal!  And you know what?  Nothing bad happened.  I didn’t miss any deadlines.  The people that wanted me just emailed again.  They hadn’t even realized I’d been playing hooky.  They’d probably forgotten whose turn it was to LOL back.  The cheesy chain letters that promise a piano will fall on your head if you don’t pass it on, the you tube links, the check-ins and the “tag you’re it” emails.  Poof.  See ya. It felt… AMAZING. 

 

Ok, so maybe this freedom didn’t last much more than two days.  And maybe it did take half a day to be OK with it, to mourn the loss, to agonize over what really was important in there.  But I got over it.  I got used to it.  I felt lighter, more unencumbered.  I might have even whistled a little.  And I decided that periodically I’m just going to do it.  Just post a response declaring email bankruptcy:  “Everything in my in-basket is gone.  Get back to me if it’s really important.”  Now that’s what I call living.