I was not built for instant comunication

[glitterpigeon]

everyone wants to talk to me. all the time. and while I love talking to people, something about the fact that people expect me to respond to them all the time freaks me out big time! I've never been the type to struggle to put down my phone. I am notoriously hard to text. I will disappear into the woods for hours at a time and barely even respond to my closest of friends and loved ones every day.

I was built for letters. it is so much more intuitive to me, and allows me to have much more consistent contact with people. (though i struggle with writing by hand due to my learning disability :/). I love modern technology and all that it has done for us but I can't stand that I'm expected to be instantly accessible and even more, I kind of hate that people will respond to me immediately after I text them. at least wait half an hour! I don't want to be all I was born in the wrong generation technology sucks about this cause that's not true, but I have started writing letters to my friends and it's great.

I can send them little gifts, I don't have the anxiety of the instant response. I can disappear for a week and it's fine. there's excitement. anticipation. the immortalizing of my life onto paper, rather than digital impermanence. I can't text you pressed flowers or pretty food packaging or a bookmark or a cool leaf I found. and it really makes me less anxious cause I was not built for texting and I have never really liked doing it and now I am free. partially. a little bit.

I also am considering getting into mail art (starting with my secret project.....)

[xwindows]

I was built for letters. it is so much more intuitive to me, and allows me to have much more consistent contact with people. (though i struggle with writing by hand due to my learning disability :/). I love modern technology and all that it has done for us but I can't stand that I'm expected to be instantly accessible and even more

Would like asynchronous communication but got difficulty with writing by hand? A solution is simple and low tech: Just Use Email (TM)

^ Also disable automatic mail check in your email client; only check it manually once a day or less.

Email is a good fence to shield your private space from the crazy life with haunting notifications, FOMO allure, and all those social-control pressure to be always wired/wireless-connected. You can write offline idly in dozens of "pointless" drafts that you might eventually decide not to send, and no one would be the wiser of what you were thinking (1). Replying to non-business email after a week or even a month doesn't require you to apologize for your delay.

And among digital communication formats, email's track record in permanence beaten virtually all other digital competitors to dust. Email actually exist as file, and that file format had been portable and could be exported/imported among virtually every email clients and services for at least 30 years now. One can import email files from 30 years ago into today's email client, and they will read fine as if no time had passed.

But that was just a digital thing I would like to mention...


(1) Including your own email provider, when you configured your email client to store emails/drafts offline.

[xwindows]

the immortalizing of my life onto paper, rather than digital impermanence. I can't text you pressed flowers or pretty food packaging or a bookmark or a cool leaf I found. and it really makes me less anxious

Well, if you were rather looking at physical correspondence media for these reasons, that's okay too. Human's brain operate on 5 senses, and more number of senses you invoke when you're doing something, it will make such event (or stuff) more immersing and memorable for you and others involved. (1) Making things in physical format shows your effort, and when done well, impress people much better than "virtual" stuff.

I remembered back in my high school days, I did a slide presentation about famous paintings and their history in an art class; and that required a copy of presentation files to be handed in, in a form of CD. I was not suave enough to have an inkjet printer with CD labeling tray at home(2), so I crafted my own template for a cut-and-fold CD envelope in a graphics editing software I was familiar with, and arranged painting images from the slide like a collage all over it in various level of darkening, then put some simple text description over it.

Then I went to a nearby copyshop and printed it in color on a glossy paper, cut, and glued it together; then proceed to slip a very cheap-looking burned CD-R with marker-written label inside. Despite a relatively cheap cost, and the fact that it was done to hide the "bland" look of media inside; it looked very much like something made with utmost care (or even professional in many people's eye). The art teacher had a double-take (3) when receiving the disc from me. Piled on the desk with other hand-ins (including ones with proper inkjet-printed label but in plain transparent jewel case!), it simply blew them out of the water.

I did the same thing when I handed in a software project assignment back in college as well. Despite it being an even cheaper gray lineart (4) with text overlaid in word processor, laser-printed at home on a plain white card stock cut-and-folded into CD envelope, designed to conceal the cheap look of marker-labeled CD-R inside as usual; it managed to emanate a strong semblance to a manual/software disc enclosed in commercially-sold electronics gadgets... (5)

Normally, handed-in discs and their associated printed reports would lay quietly on the professor's desk until he had time to look at them. But as soon as I handed in my printed report (sporting a matching artwork on the cover) with this envelope on the top... the professor's curiosity instantly got better of him. He fished the envelope up, flipped it around, flipped it back, felt it around, flipped it around again, opened it, fished the disc out, slipped the disc back in, closed it, flipped it back again, and stared at its front intensely for a bit more.

Other lab assistants couldn't help but stare as well; and eventually they came around to take their own look and feel of this "mystic package". Except giddy smiles there and then, no one said anything, but I could more or less read it from their expression that they perceived that "this is a sign of quality".

Even that the reality inside was just an alpha-quality software (typical of college assignments) consisted of dozen Perl scripts duct-taped together; the first impression was already won.

Physical impression has more impact than most people these days would give it credit for; so good luck with your endeavor. Writing these posts also make me think of considering getting into marker-based CD art when I have time now...

P.S. For others reading, I might as well toss some books here:

• David Sax, "The Revenge of Analog - Real Things and Why They Matter"; Public Affairs, USA, 2016; ISBN 978-1-61039-571-7.
• Cal Newport, "Digital Minimalism - On Living Better with Less Technology"; Penguin Business, UK, 2019; ISBN 978-0-241-34113-1.
• Susan Cain, "Quiet - The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking"; Crown, USA, 2013; ISBN 978-0-141-02919-1.

(1) You might have heard of a memory hack which involve you trying to remember things by imagining visual, audible, spatial, or even linguistic relationship between along with them. I often use a trick which I would remember the visual path to each item to buy in a supermarket, to help me remember a long shopping list.

(2) Inkjet printer is also a fickle device in general; if you weren't using them often enough, maintenance effort and cost often don't worth it.

(3) That double-take quickly made way for a giddy expression that someone would sport when gifted with a pricey gadget and couldn't wait to show that to others people.

(4) I drawn it myself this time.

(5) Many discs enclosed in actual electronics gadget box in reality look even more drab than this-- usually just a plain paper sleeve with transparent window to see an equally-drab disc with just text screened on then.