This weekend, for the fourth time, a friend accosted me and angrily berated me for not being reachable by e-mail.
This diary is a letter to all of you out there who may have crossed this same line with one of your own friends.
It's time to stop. Just stop.
You may have decided that e-mail is the way you would like to interact with "the world out there" from now on. You may take comfort in knowing that many others have made the same decision. I congratulate you.
You may enjoy that you now have the ability to make dinner plans, catch up with distant friends, acquaintances, and relatives without actually speaking or writing a real (now called "snail mail") letter to them. Have a pat on the back.
You may enjoy watching the number of email "addresses" in your "address book" rocket into the stratosphere. Bully for you.
But the next time you tug on my sleeve and give me guilt because you can't "email" me, I'm going full meltdown.
You have been warned.
I have lots of reasons for not wanting to play in your sandbox. I know you heard them, but you didn't listen, so here they are again.
- I either know and use your phone number and home address or I don't.
If you're already my friend, I sincerely hope that our e-mail correspondence or lack thereof has not diminished your view or value of that friendship. I still have a telephone and a real mailbox, by the way. You remember those.
If I have your phone number and address but don't use them, there is probably a reason for that. Pardon me if the fact that you carved out 7.2 precious seconds from your busy day to suggest we exchange e-mail addresses lacks in my estimation a certain sincerity.
If you were my friend a long time ago, or perhaps a girlfriend, there is probably also a reason that we no longer speak or write. You should not take this as a sign that you are inferior. A human life has many doors, and people enter and leave. Brevity is not the sign of a failed relationship; perhaps instead it is the sign of a complete one.
- I don't have time.
I'm working to keep my job. I'm looking for a new job. I have a wife and a child who require my focus, attention, and love. Sometimes I need to be by myself. I need to write and create.
I am out of time.
A few of you have explained to me that e-mail will actually save me time. I don't believe you.
At all.
- You e-mail people are starting to scare me.
In recent months, I have read and heard stories of marriages scuttled when spouses discovered the secret lives of their husbands or wives in their e-mail "in-boxes". I have heard of friendships destroyed by e-mail misunderstandings, or email feuds (now called "flame wars").
I have been at offices and seen people surrounded by actual human beings, e-mailing each other as if they worked on different continents.
During the holidays, I actually received an e-mail greeting "card". As if that is any substitute. I wanted to ram a chopstick up my nose and into my brain.
I don't think it's insane to question whether as a culture we are diminishing our capability to interact face to face with sincerity and depth, and to examine what impact e-mail technology has in that process. I don't think it's insane to question how much time we spend tethered to a computer or wireless device, and whether the quality of those interactions are, or will ever be, to the standards of genuine human touch.
So when you question my resistance to e-mail in such an insistent and almost cultish manner, I can't help but wonder if there's any limit to misery's longing for company.