I spent the day responding to emails, texts, on a video call….and then my watch started buzzing on my wrist…urging me to pick up my personal phone and take a call that was coming in.
As a general rule I don’t touch my personal phone during the work day, or read personal emails or texts. Kirk has resorted to sending me text to email to my work email if he needs to let me know anything that needs my attention between 7am and 5pm. And then I detach from my work devices from 5pm until 7am. It’s an endless cycle…with my personal devices seeing much less use than the work ones because at the end of the work day, the last thing I want to do is respond to more messages. My brother gets mad at me for it…even having left a voice message once asking if I was alive. It took a day or three for me to respond.
I reached for my watch button to silence it and decline the call but stopped when I saw the name.
Why was he calling me on this phone instead of my work phone. That seemed odd. I didn’t even know he had this phone number. He must have had it for over a decade if he was calling me on it. I can’t ever recall giving it to him but it must have been ages ago when he was helping me with accessing some resources to put on a workshop years and years ago.
Oh, wait, we were both at a conference last summer and exchanged numbers for connecting at a pub.
That makes sense now.
I reached for my phone and took the call.
An academic family member, extended academic family. We have a collaboration on some research he is leading and for which one of my team is helping with access to fish and other resources. He’d sent an email on that topic the other week, but I’d been cc’d, I’m not the primary contact, she is. So weird that he’d call me.
Except it wasn’t about that. Of course, I should have connected the other dots. After having an email in inbox this morning from my graduate supervisor, forwarding an email from a former lambaste that are connected to a thing happening next year. He was inviting me to join in on organizing the thing that I would be attending regardless, and I was happy to say yes, that I’d love to help.
We caught up and he made a comment about hoping it was ok that he’d called rather than emailed, and shared thoughts on how nice it is to actually hear a voice rather than read emails and texts. How sometime sit’s also nice to not feel a need to turn on a camera.
He said he was happy I’d answered, that his kids won’t answer the phone when he calls unless they think there is something in it for them. Now he says he has to send a text to tell people he’s going to call.
Remember when the phone rang and we didn’t think twice about answering it? Remember when we ran to get the phone because we had no idea who was at the other end and it was just exciting to think someone was calling?
And then…remember when we’d just drop by a friend’s house and knock on the door/ring the doorbell and say “Hi!”?
Does anyone do that anymore?
Now we text or email to ask if it’s ok to drop by.
He made a comment that we live in the most socially connected time in history, and we’ve never been more anti-social.
He’s right.
We’ve largely forgotten how to be spontaneously social.
And I’m glad I picked up the call.
