But as I learn how to check my three email accounts, and facebook, and pandora and the super cool weather app-- I have realized what's been happening in the volunteer support portion of my job.
iphone syndrome.
People say to me: "I didn't see that email". "We've got a meeting tonight?" "You tried to reach me?" "You're not going to be there?" "When?" "Where?" "How?"
I thought I was absolutely losing my mind. Really? How did I get so extremely flaky? But then I realized that half the people I thought I'd communicated with, knew about the meeting or the plan or whatever.
Then I got my iphone and the rest became clear. If you read a message in the parking lot between the grocery store and the car--you may not remember either the details or the whole message, you probably won't reply, and you certainly aren't going to take time to put it on your calendar.
But there's more than just iphone syndrome. People are not checking email--opting for texting and facebook instead. They're probably active on twitter, but that's on my list for July, so I'm not even aware of what I'm missing there. And when they see "church" come up on their caller id, they let my calls go to voice mail--I know that's true!
It's good to know I've not lost my mind. And it's good to know that some of the lovely volunteers and parents and teens I communicate with aren't just dismissing me out of hand. I think I just need to adjust the way I manage communications. I need a twitter feed that posts to a facebook page that you can sign up to receive text messages from. And I need to learn to communicate in 10 word bursts. "like" the status and I'll consider it a done deal.
Or I'll just build a bonfire and learn to send smoke signals. Or semaphore. Or drumming. Or maybe I'll just pare down the schedule a little, post the information on a bulletin board and call it "retro" scheduling! Ha.
So all that said, when I blow off your cute facebook post on my wall, hit me back--I probably just read it on my iphone while buying huge vats of hummus at Costco. Ha!
Almost summer. Almost summer. Almost summer.
1 comment:
It's too true - when I got my iPhone I suddenly became flaky about replying to folks' emails because I was reading them at bad times ... and we're all doing that now, checking in and multitasking but not doing anything particularly well! A new challenge.
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