Monday, April 13, 2009

Pondering.

I'm in a slump.

A blogging slump, that is.

I've been blogging for about four years now, and while I don't feel like I need to make apologies for lack of posting, I do feel as if I'm doing a poor job of communicating. That's almost a joke because there are so many communication methods out there.

E-mail. IM. Hi5. Facebook. MySpace. Blogging. Twitter. And so much more.

I recently picked up a pen and paper and wrote some notes to people back home. One of the team members was leaving to head back to Texas, so I gave her money to mail a package to Pennsylvania. As I wrote the notes, I thought about how half of the people I was writing to I could actually "instantly" communicate with, rather than wait a week for the notes to even reach them.

Several months ago, a bizarre and strange thing happened on my IM account (with MSN) where all my contacts showed up twice so I had 140 contacts. But the weird thing was it only showed up like that on the computer at work, not on the computer at home. So in a moment of pure stupidity :), I went through the contact list at work and deleted all the "extra" accounts. I was so happy to get my contact list back to normal, but that happiness lasted for approximately 4 hours until I got on the home computer and signed in to MSN IM. Silly me, most of my contacts were deleted, leaving me with seven (7) contacts. I had to wait until people chatted me so I could add them back into my contacts. This actually turned out to be a good thing, because my list of 70 contacts dropped down to 36. And in reality, I probably only chat with about 22 of those contacts now.

A couple of weeks ago, I did the same thing with Facebook. I was at about 200 friends, but realized that I didn't really stay in touch with all 200 of them. I decided to trim down the friends list and got it to 95. Just today, someone sent a friend request and I agreed. Out of 105 people, one person re-sent a friend request. Now I do not mean to say that the 104 other people don't want to keep in touch. It just seems to me that it is overkill - too MUCH. We've become so familiarized with one another through social networking that I think we often forget to actually communicate.

So that's what I've been pondering recently. All this communication at my fingertips, and yet I still feel like I'm doing a poor job at, well, communicating. Any thoughts on the matter?

4 comments:

Rachel said...

I'm totally in a blogging slump too!!! I thought that I would snap out of it once I got home, but I think it is worse now than when I was in Africa. There I at least had the excuse of no internet! I feel like anything I talk about is old news, common knowledge, or just plain boring. LOL

I think for me, it helps to have a clear purpose of why I have those 'communication' accounts. Something I definitely need to sit down and think through again. :)

FB is definitely a way to stay in touch with friends across the globe. Twitter is to stay in day-to-day touch with friends here in the valley, although I hardly ever use it now. The blog is a little harder to define. It has changed throughout the years, but I'm feeling a bit purposeless right now.

Unknown said...

I love computer communicating but am terrible at phoning people. I really have gotten bad at calling my family.

I only use one or two means of communication reguarlly. E mails and blogger. I like MSN and use that with my Mom and other missionary friends regularly.

Well, I keep checking your blog and it´s good! :)

May God bless you and your communication. :)

Katina said...

I got your sweet postcard on Saturday! Thanks for sending it...that was so thoughtful of you!

The kids loved it! It resides on the kitchen counter, and sometimes the floor, if it gets knocked over by rambunctious children. ;) A great reminder to pray for Miss Anne!

How are you doing? I read in the news that Bangkok is having issues today...are you safe where you are at?

Anonymous said...

Thanks for being my friend:-D.