Click away (day 194)

Sometimes one more click doesn't cut it.  Sometimes the unreal nature of digital communications gets louder than the real connections they are supposed to represent.  Emails come in.  Some get answered.  Others sit in uncomfortable silence unable to generate a coherent response or be discarded.  As the life stream goes by they scroll off the screen and the silence becomes the response.  Sometimes they come back and do not take nothing for an answer.  Emails go out.  Some are answers and wish to be final.  Some are missives and wish to be answered but are forgotten until the response comes.  Some are FYIs and are confused when they elicit a response.  Whole days go by where the conversations with people in the flesh are greatly outnumbered by those with people never seen.  Eventually, the immediacy of digital communication gets confused for the efficiency of information surfing.  A manic clicking fest has left a mass of waiting and frustration.  Many conversations are in the air.  Typing them will always be slower and that's why there needs to be many in the air.  It's not more productive, it's the same.  Except for one crucial difference:  sometimes all the answers come at once and trigger a slight panic at seeing the day's end without an empty daybox.  It's the feed for the involuntary scroll out.  The drama of the inbox never ceases.  It's a soap opera with the same characters and different actors.  Apparently younger people don't do email.  The drama has no doubt mutated to infect another medium.

I needed time away from the the clicks.  I'm back now.  I think.

A song for this post.