Thu 18 Jun 2009 – 11.54
When it rains, it pours. The old cliché has nothing to do with weather, although this June finds that metaphor especially apt. Things are busy lately.
After many months, if not years, of suffering through the various gradients of employment, I find myself once again working a regular schedule. I hadn’t worked a 40-hour week between mid-January and early June. Add to that two commutes and the general exhaustion that comes from starting a new routine and it’s become predictably exhausting.
In addition, and with timing most strange, I’m getting a lot of clients calling to do some work with me outside of my daytime gig. So I’m doing what designers do from time to time, and going home for a night shift in an effort to fill the creative, if not financial, holes in their day-to-day.
So yes, I’m busy. And while busy-ness is generally a good thing, it has obvious drawbacks.
posted by Scott in careers,coffee,health & fitness,life,relationships.
Wed 17 Jun 2009 – 11.48
Would you believe that teenagers these days send an average of 2,772 text messages a month?! That’s an average of 80 per day! This shocking statistic comes from Nielson, via a New York Times article. I caught wind of it via Spark.
I read that and feel thoroughly old. This statistic in and of itself is bizarre, but it raises a more profound question about what are the most effective methods of communication with friends, relatives, colleagues, lovers, and anyone else.
Email is old-fashioned, they say. Ok, that’s going overboard, methinks, especially when our work days revolve around sending email. Facebook messages? That’s the same thing as email, just tied into a closed platform a la Prodigy and Compuserve back in 1993. While we may check our iPhones and Blackberries on the go, email is still a non-instant form of communication — etiquette dictates you give 24 hours before a follow-up message.
There are a number of quasi-instant forms of communication, such as Twitter, which allow us to keep in touch, but aren’t predictable enough to use for urgent correspondences. For that a good old phone call may suffice.
And of course there’s instant messenger, which is supposed to be instant. But if the party on the other end doesn’t answer, or if they are away from the keyboard, the whole endeavor is moot.
What happens when you run into those folks who simply “don’t answer calls and don’t check voicemail?” Yes, I’m serious, I know people like that. I call them, and if they don’t pick up, I email. Or text. It’s annoying.
We as twentysomethings have the dubious honour of being in-between the generations as far as communication goes. We are masters of email, texting, twitter, IM, and yes, even phone conversations. (not so much with the snail mail.) But the trouble really starts when we have to manage different people, older, younger, and similarly-aged, who communicate in all sorts of ways and can’t comprehend other methods of keeping in touch.
Wasn’t it all just easier when we would knock on your neighbor’s door?
So, how do you keep in touch. Which tools do you use, or not use?
Here’s another question to make you feel old — for how many of your close friends/family do you have their phone number memorised? Probably not many.
posted by Scott in careers,life,relationships.