If you are one of those blessed souls travelling the world and changing a home location every few months, then you must have gone through the whole “We might never see each other again but let’s keep in touch!” phase with at least one person.
I did it countless times. In the past few years, I changed a country at least four times, gaining an extensive overview of the cheapest supermarkets, and making interesting friends along the way. My question is: How the hell do you manage to stay in touch with these people?
Why is it so hard to reply?
You get separated from the other person, you start texting, tagging each other, snapchatting, sending carrier-pigeons and stuff like that. Over time, the conversation gets less frequent and it’s harder and harder to reply on time. Eventually, you just end up having an unopened text rotting away in your chat history for days, weeks, months…and suddenly it’s just a somebody that you used to know.
At this point, I have several non-conversations like that. And if I’m being honest, it makes me feel super guilty. Seriously! I even dreamt about these people ganging up on me and making me watch the Bee Movie over and over again. Damn, that shit was scary!
Blame it on your personality...basically, you're the asshole here!
As a hardcore introvert, I tend to categorize my friends and to sort of separate the wheat from the chaff (That was the meanest thing I said today and that’s something, considering I blurted out that dolphins are not nearly as cool as orcas at our work meeting today…Also, I just recently learned that phrase and was just dying to use it, so don’t hate!).
- Group A: very close friends who have witnessed me hyperventilating every time someone died on The Walking Dead; I'd rip my own heart out for them
- Group B: the rest
It really looks horrible written like this. In reality, it’s not as black and white, but let’s stick to it for the sake of me not writing an entire book on my past failed relationships (My working title is: “10,000 Tips on How to Stay Lonely and Miserable for the Rest of Your Life” but it doesn’t quite roll off the tongue.)
Once there is no depth to our connection, I tend to treat texting as a chore that I am obliged to do in order to maintain the social construct set as standards by our society (Man, that sentence sounds so smart, it almost made me fall over. If it’s not correct, then keep it shut and don’t ruin it for me!). Yeah, sure, I will reply in the evening…or tomorrow…or in the weekend…next month for real…how about next life?
Besides, why do I need so many accounts on social media? Why do I have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, WeChat, Hangouts (What the hell?! Who even uses that?)… I don’t even remember posting anything in the last year!
Freaking peer pressure! They all made me download all that, yet I still prefer to play Minion Rush than to care about snaps of people with mutilated faces (Those are really scary! Why, Snapchat??).
Ok, end of my rant.
Now, I made a bet with myself:
I’m gonna text every single person I lost touch with…in the past year (Otherwise it would be unbearably awkward!) and I will reply to them always within 24 hours. If I manage to keep it up for a month, it should stick as a habit and maybe make me a more likeable person able to form meaningful relationships.
If not, then I’m throwing my phone out, cancelling my rental agreement and going to Morocco to live as a sheep.
Beautiful goal!
I really deserve to spend some quality time with my best friends Ben and Jerry now.
P.S. Feel free to share your insights and techniques on handling a high volume of incoming texts. I was thinking of crafting a beautiful template and send it to everyone…but for some reason, that never worked for me in an actual conversation…
P.P.S. Do you think I am just a sentient robot, on a quest to find and feel love?