Communication Skills

It's so good to be back in town and reconnecting with friends and the family here in Oz.

There's this odd legacy thing in my head that somehow thinks that phoning people is related to distance. This makes no sense, of course. I use Skype and can call other Skype users for free, and it costs only cents to make a call to someone's regular phone. Yet I don't call people when I am overseas and then spend the first week back calling up my friends to see how they're doing.

It's odd, really, since it would sound so much more impressive to say, "Hi. I'm sitting in the harbor of Sarande, Albania, and was thinking about you so I thought I would call." But, no. I wait till I am home to say, "Hi, I'm back. How ya doing?"

And let me be honest. A tiny part of me is hoping that after 10 weeks away, when I call my friends up at least a few of them are going to say, "Tell me about your trip" or, in the case of my friends who really need more happening in their lives, "Can I come over and look at your photos while you tell me about your trip?"

But instead I keep hearing, "I've been reading your blog and I know you've had a great trip, so tell me - are you jet lagged?" No one I've called cares about hearing all the little things we've done since they have already read about it. (Except for one friend I spoke with this week. He doesn't care about what we've done, either, but he doesn't read my blog. I'm pretty sure he doesn't read it because he doesn't care all that much about all the little things that happen to me.)

That's not a judgment about my friend, by the way. I really do understand that you might not wake up every morning wondering what happened to Don yesterday. Unless you're my mother, but she doesn't count in this discussion. It's more about the fact that I am so surprised at how much all of us share with one another nowadays.

Every day I check out Facebook to see what is happening to my friends. I know that Sandy went to Rio Tomatlan Friday night, that Megan is overdoing the exercise at rehab, that Jeff drank a bit much at the Rutgers game and that Davy has become a Powerpoint expert (I have given him a goal to which he can aspire!). I know Heidi found a big leaf in her toilet, that Glen had the kids for the weekend and that Hannah spilled the baby's bottle on herself.

Is it too much information? Actually, it's not - and it's not even close. It takes seconds to read, and if I wasn't interested I wouldn't have added them as Facebook friends. I enjoy knowing what's going on in the lives of my family and friends.

No, I really am happy to know about the little things going on in my friends' lives. The only negative about it all? Well, despite the fact that they write about some of the most minute parts of their lives, I have noticed that none of them seem to have written that they read my blog. Hmmm.