Sick
So why am I sick during the brightest and busiest time of the year?
Well it’s been ridiculously warm so sleeping at night can be a challenge. Work is busier so I push myself more this time of year however my new job requires much less of me in terms of effort and stress, although I do have to get up much earlier which probably contributes to the problem. I also blame my friends.
Don’t get me wrong, I like my friends, I like talking to them and spending time with them but some of them seem to push their boundaries. For example hanging out long after I should have gone to bed on a work night - how do you put your foot down without hurting anyone’s feelings? Yes I like spending time with you but if I don’t get some sleep I am going to get sick. What kind of choice is that to have to make? I try to be serious but gentle, I try to make a joke of it, and yet still the message doesn’t get through. And now I’m sick.
How about keeping a sick person at arm’s length because you don’t want to catch what they have? Again, I don’t want to be rude or push them away however this is when I make my money for the year. Make me sick in November or January when it doesn’t cost so much in terms of opportunity cost - I’ll give your contagious ass a hug then, okay?
Or how about MSN? This one’s the real kicker for me. You see I only have a cell phone and no land line so I see MSN as a way of keeping my cell bill down. But no one seems to respect the ‘Away’ mode any more. I might be out getting groceries, taking a nap, making food, or otherwise AWAY from the computer and yet still asinine messages might come in like “hey what’s up?” or “what cha doin?“. Again not wanting to burn bridges I try to bring this up casually with people but all I seem to get in reply is “well you’re ALWAYS set to away“.
If I’m already having a conversation with someone about something serious or wanted to pay attention to chatting with a specific person I’ll also set myself to ‘away’ so I’m not distracted by other messages however since people always message me regardless of status I’m pretty much always trying to keep my fingers in the dam. I’m not trying to say I’m popular or anything, frankly much of the time it’s work related. If only people respected the ‘away’ status then I might finally get through the queue and set myself to ‘online’ more often.
I’ve experimented with other status options such as ‘Out To Lunch’ when I’m eating or trying ‘Busy’ when things are going crazy but it doesn’t seem to make a difference. I’ve even tried putting what I was doing in my screenname, it just encourages people to ask about it! If my screenname is ‘Eating’ and my status set to ‘Out To Lunch’ why do people feel the need to interrogate me about my food choices rather than just let me eat? It has gotten so bad that some days I get up to answer MSN messages more times during a meal than bites it takes to eat it.
And invariably right as I’m trying to go to bed someone starts messaging me about either work or something completely unimportant if indeed there is even an actual topic. Am I the only one who actually thinks about someone’s status before bombarding them with messages? And what’s with people who send 4 messages one right after another when they could all easily fit in one? “Hey“, “What’s up?“, “What are you doing?“, and “I’m bored” all received within 5 seconds could easily be one message.
I miss ICQ. If you didn’t answer a message right away it waited in a queue, if you didn’t get to replying until after the person went offline then the message was saved until they came online next, and most of all when trying to message someone with a status other than Online a customizable message would pop up.
So when I got sick I thought it was time to put my foot down, if people weren’t going to respect my status I was just going to keep my computer off, should keep my apartment cooler and if people had something to say they could send an e-mail. But no, the great bored masses would not be ignored. The phone calls and text messages began to come in, including some asking why I wasn’t online when they knew I was sick! It was so bad that when the person I WANTED to hear from called, my battery was almost dead! I want to shout “what do you people want from me?!“.
I’m not trying to be a dick here, seriously. But the fact is I live by myself, there is no division of labour. If it needs to be done I’m the only person who can do it, if you keep me from it then it doesn’t get done. I’m not asking people to leave me alone, I’m not saying I’m mad at someone or don’t want to talk to people. All I’m asking is please respect the possibility that if I’m Away, Out To Lunch, Busy, or Offline there might just be a reason for it. Maybe take a nanosecond to think before sending a half dozen messages that actually don’t say anything. I just wish there was some way to get this point across without hurting people’s feelings or being misunderstood but if people can’t grasp the subtleties of being ‘Away’ meaning I’m actually ‘Away’ I can see how me saying ‘I’m not mad’ could be ambiguous.
Maybe it’s my fault. Perhaps I’m an MSN tease, letting the program run even though I might not be completely free and intensely interested in talking about nothing. I had thought maybe it was other people being rude for not respecting my status and/or screenname but perhaps status means absolutely nothing, maybe it’s like a font colour - a blue font doesn’t mean you’re sad, maybe ‘Away’ is just a random expression of nothingness. Non-information. Decoration. I don’t know.
I’m really trying hard not to be a jerk here but I think turning off my computer and shutting off my phone just to get a few minutes to do what needs to be done would make me more of a jerk. I mean, what if there was an emergency of some kind? What if someone needed me for something other than inane chatter? It could happen.
I don’t want someone to read this and feel bad or stop talking to me. If the world was perfect they’d simply read this and say “hey, maybe I’ll check his status before I pester him next time” and leave it at that. Unfortunately my previous subtly didn’t seem to be working so I had to pull out this bigger stick to get the message across, hopefully no one will hold it against me.
