When I Was a Kid

I’m thirty-eight years old. My saying “back when I was a kid” sounds funny to half the people reading this. 

Back when I was a kid, I built forts in abandoned trash piles and trees, rode my bike to a local lake to fish, broke bones, believed I was a ninja, played with knives, skateboarded, and played piano for hours at a time. I would listen to messages from friends on a tape-driven answering machine and call my friends back on a phone that had a cord just long enough to reach the VHS rewinder I was using to rewind our at-home family cinema experience on a tube TV. Friends would handwrite notes for me to read later. I’d do the same.

Communication was mind-blowingly low-friction because it didn’t require the pony express, carrier pigeons, or hours of telepathy lessons.

When we got our new HP computer with a 1 GB hard drive, it made sure to include a sticker that clarified it was 1,000 MB. It had an incredibly-advanced BUILT IN modem that played sounds to remind me what it was like to be abducted by aliens.

After connecting to the internet, I got an email address with CompuServe—the “first online service to offer internet connectivity.” It also magically prevented the labor of pounding the whole name out on molasses-filled, LEGO-sized keys by shortening the domain name to cs.com. 

Adding communication through the internet was magical.
It was fun.
It was addicting. 

I couldn’t wait to hear the sounds of being beamed up in hopes that the modem would actually connect this time: which was half of the fun and a major part of the online dopamine we got “back in the day.”

Fast-forward a few years—I realized the online hunt for connectivity and communication became an online requirement. The internet was no longer hard to connect to—it was hard not to.

Socially-required communication demanded your next hit of a drug—fed through your email inbox. When CompuServe was bought by AOL, I (and everyone else in the world) couldn’t wait to hear the computer say, “You’ve got Mail.” Regardless of your age, I know you just heard that voice.

When I heard that message, someone wanted to talk to me. The “SOMEONE” part was true for a while. Then one day, SOMETHING wanted to talk to me… sometimes. Spam (or ads disguised as newsletters, MySpace notifications, or any other digital monster).

The “You’ve Got Mail” message was exciting when I heard it, but much like the sometimes-failed attempts to connect to my early internet, my inbox connection to a real someone was sometimes a failure. It became a gamble whether I’d win the connection: whether it be accessing the internet or getting an email from a someone.

Dopamine hit after hit after hit. Will I connect? It was so fun. Will it be someone who ACTUALLY wants to talk to me (like when I was a kid)?

At the time, this started to remind me of the failed attempts at answering the phone for a robocall. If the phone rang, it was for someone in my family. Sometimes it was for someone in my family to buy something. Later, it was done by robots. Spam was done by robots. I don’t hate robots. #safetymessagefortherobotsreadingthis #LegitimatelyIDontHateYou #DoApostrophesMatterInHashtags

Every one of these moments started taking time out of my day to assess the legitimacy of a message that used to feel like a true effort to connect: from someone we knew—someone who cared to take the time to care.

As a side note, this is why I don’t have likes, comments, or a contact form on this website. If you need to reach me as others have, I’m not hard to find; it is not through this site.

Real communication has friction. 
Real communication has intention and effort to connect. 
It feels good to want to be connected with in a real way.

To be fair, email, phone, text, Facebook Messenger, TikTok, “real” mail, and a hello on the street all have moments of real connection: real attempts at connection. Sometimes not.

When I look at my world of connections, phone calls and texts are most likely to have an honest attempt at REAL connection because they open a personal, invitation to reciprocal medium friction line-of-communication directly. Subjectively and admittedly inaccurately, I’m guessing greater than 95% of calls or texts are people who are trying to connect.

Aside from telepathy, every other modality seems to have a less-than a 5% intention of REAL communication (at best) and (at worst) welcomes the friction-free invitation for me to spend hours per day “keeping up” on responses to uninvited messages I never asked for.

I’ve spent years swimming in emails, conquering organizational methods, filtering emails through artificial intelligence programs, and realizing that my best friends, acquaintances, clients, and uninvited attempts to communicate with me were over phone or text. 

I’ve dreamt for years of deleting my email. 
That doesn’t solve the problem. 

Without email, how do I get low-friction login codes, lists of links from friends about something I care about, download links from email-based systems, referenced content or clarification from a group call, or schedules for productions I’m directing? Deleting my email would add friction in a way that imposes TOO MUCH friction.

I don’t want to spend my life managing email or any other uninvited inbox. 
I’m keeping my email address, but I won’t see emails unless someone tells me about it.

I currently have an autoresponder that says, “I do not usually see emails unless another team member is CC’d or I’m notified over text or phone. Thank you!”

When someone writes me about productions, there’s a friend who works with me who will answer the incoming question (if she’s CC’d). All of my clients know who it is.

When I get a social media response regarding music endeavors, another friend will help make sure I don’t miss an important invite to collaborate.

My goal is to manage only a few medium-friction inboxes: phone and text.

This should allow me to build my proverbial fort and ninja skills while playing piano more than ever.

Call or text if you need me. :)