The Zen of Email

You are reading a website, a colorful bubble starts bouncing up and down, demanding your attention, like the empty needle of a heroin addict. You stop reading the website or whatever it was that you were just doing, and now give all your attention to figuring out what the colorful bubble on your desktop is, why is it bouncing up and down, and what the hell is it doing there.

This is what Instant Messaging, IM, is for most of us. We view it as a convenient way for staying in contact with friends we don’t see too often, forgetting the fact that IM can actually be a major pain in the ass. Have you ever noticed how you just sort of linger on there in front of the monitor, somewhat unconsciously and somewhat consciously, deciding to stay there for just a little longer, in case someone has to tell you something urgent all of the sudden.

Then at about 02:00 am. when the contacts from your contact list have finally almost completely gone offline, you can relaxand shut down the computer, and move on to other activities. Then there’s just one problem: you don’t have any time left, you spent it all making sure that no-one had anything utterly urgent to tell you. What are you going to do now? You had all sorts of plans for today: you were going to play the guitar, write a blog entry, invent a cure for aids, and maybe just maybe if you had any time left, watch Late Night with Conan O’ Brien.

This is what most of IM users are dealing with even as we speak. They are almost addicted on trying to stay online the whole day, leaving everything else undone. Maybe mankind is addicted to communication, maybe that’s why we like to spend all our time watching colorful bubbles hopping up and down, on our desktops, with ever increasing speed, or maybe we like to spend all our time sitting in front of the monitor hoping to see some bubbles jumping up and down, as if to justify our existence, make us feel worthy of existing. What ever the case may be, we can draw one conclusion from here: being online fucking sucks.

You can easily leave behind the trouble and heartache of Instant Messaging by using Email. You’ll still stay in contact with your friends and you won’t have to spend the whole day waiting to see some colorful bubble bouncing. Unless of course you keep your email open all the time waiting to get replys, in which case I’d suggest you get a life. That’s what I was planning on doing anyway.