Staying in Touch
, Seville
How do you stay in touch with friends who live in a different city, country, or even continent?
Before the phone and internet your best bet probably was via post. Nowadays we’re lucky that a message can reach people in less than a second.
But, I’ve noticed that for a long time I didn’t really make use of that. Any form of messaging stresses me out way too much. Seeing those messages on WhatsApp/social media pile up over the day makes me feel bad for not responding for quite some time. It always stays in the back of my head that I should respond. Somehow it literally drains my energy. It has annoyed me so much that I started blocking most notifications on my phone.
Of course, I appreciate texting friends and staying in touch. I’m happy that someone would even want to reach me. I don’t know why it stresses me out so much. I can’t handle all the notifications. When I started turning them off I felt a lot calmer. Then when I decide to check messages it’s because I want to and I can handle responding to multiple people and reading through various groups.
How can anyone handle texting all day with many people? There are too many people I want to stay in touch with and it overwhelms me thinking about how I can do that. Everyone is living in different time zones or has different schedules. A few messages every few months could be enough for me if we’re not staying in the same city, but the contact frequency that feels appropriate varies from culture to culture and even between individuals.
An alternative to messages could be calling, which I have also been making use of very little. Here the problem might be that it’s synchronous communication. Would it be best to schedule a call every few weeks/months? Do people do that?
Until now the easiest thing to do was when I go to another place to text my friends living there and be like “yo, wanna do something?” At least that works. It will still leave me overwhelmed with staying in touch with my friends living in other places.