Communication vs. chat

Lately I've fallen into what seems to be a common trap of wanting to send people a text message or email rather than actually phoning or talking to them in person. It's been happening ever since I got this new job at the local newspaper, but the problem has been in my life much longer. With the new job, I have to call people and actually talk to them. It's proving to be a challenge each time. Girls are especially difficult for me to communicate with because, as my mind tells me, that's how it should be.

Why am I so fearful of actually talking to someone? It could be that I've become conversant with emailing, Tweeting, or sending a text message to the person I need to contact. Or maybe I think I'll say something stupid (which happened a lot in my younger life, leading to fear in the present day). The more palpable cause, though, is probably that I don't want to let that person know anything about me. I'm scared of being even that vulnerable, and that's a considerable problem.

When I found myself interviewing a girl for work yesterday, I was beyond panicky. It's not something I do on a daily basis and it was never in my plans as a writer. But, of course, plans change and I end up in situations like that. I find myself continually faced with the choice of calling or text messaging, and I almost always favor the latter because I tell myself it's "more convenient" or "better for them". The real reason is that I'm not comfortable with talking over the phone. I'll tell people that I don't use Facebook because "I like interacting with people in real life", but that's not true at all. I actually don't have one because I have bad memories of who I used to be a few years ago, and Facebook is connected to those memories. I also want to force myself to socialize in person.

This grand shambles of communication — in my life, at least — is not appealing to me. Lately I've been trying hard to do different things with my time, to stop thinking about what I will do next, to challenge myself to get out of the house more, and to simply do things that are uncomfortable for me. Exempli gratia: I'm getting my blood taken next Tuesday, which is the next step in my great adventure to—oh dear, it's going to be dolorous, isn't it?

My point here is that communication in this day and age is broken. People prefer to use virtual characters and emoticons to convey their perceptions rather than using the words God gave them. I can't accuse any one person of this because I myself do it. It's hard to take the more undefended road when there's a phone in your pocket that creates all the walls for you. I must agree, walls are very nice, but we're people and we don't need walls to communicate — we need other people by our side in the physical realm. We need people who can delight in our company and not be distracted by their mobile phone every few minutes. We need vulnerability to connect, and when it's lost, so is candor.

I hope you enjoyed this edition of Jacob's thoughts, which is a capricious time during which he over-thinks matters to only the greatest extent.