Ms. Communication

Sometimes this thing called the Internet can be a tricky thing.  In many, many, many ways I love it.  You can find out so much information so quickly, you can be exposed to different ideas that never would have passed by your door step, you can shop without leaving your house and you can communicate with people without using the hated phone.  There are some problems that are caused though and it has to do with the communication aspect.  I really do hate using the phone for the most part.  There are a few people I like to chat with now and again but as time goes by I'm disliking it more and more.  I would much rather go out for a drink, a walk, sit and chat or what mostly happens, email and Facebook.  I'm happy using those methods most of the time but there does seem to be issues with miscommunication once in a while. 

One of the issues is I can be a somewhat sarcastic person.  That is really hard to translate in text.  I try to really watch my use of it when I am sending messages to someone.  Another issue is the message going to the wrong person.  I had my phone mess up the other day and sent a text meant for my husband to a friend instead.  Don't worry it wasn't anything risque but I did have to send a few more follow up texts to explain the strange as well as sarcastic comments I had made poking fun at my husbands attachment to a coworker who was transferred. 

Sometimes technology just downright fails us.  I'm not really sure what is the matter with my Facebook.  I have even had tech people look at my settings and configurements.  No one can figure out why I don't get and email when someone sends me a Facebook message.  Also sometimes the messages I send just don't make it through.  I'll wait a while for a response, send a second message asking if they got it only to find out it never was delivered.  So if one of these lapses in communication has happened to you, please don't take it personally.  I haven't been intentionally snubbing people. 

The most difficult issue to overcome though, I find, is the one of misunderstanding.  Sometimes, no matter how hard I try it doesn't seem that what I'm trying to convey is getting through.  I used to have this friend that would never answer what I was asking her.  I would send her an email asking 2 or 3 direct questions and would get an answer for 1 or possibly 2 of those.  No matter how hard I tried or how many times I would ask the remaining question it seemed that I could never get a response.  It was like she had a question blocker that would only allow her to see the parts of the email unrelated to that question.  Other times I will receive a message and won't be able to decipher it.  There will be seemingly unrelated items in the same sentence, broken English, missing punctuation, poor spelling, jumps in subject matter or sometimes many of these different issues combined.  Sometimes I wonder if my messages seem this way to others.  My constant obsession with spell check takes care of the one issue but there really isn't much help for the others.  Since I have a tendency to be somewhat scatter brained I think there must have been a few times when someone has gotten a message from me that took wild leaps in subject matter that were hard to follow.  I just have to hope that they were eventually able to sort out what I was saying.  However, this might be a reason that I have difficulty getting some of the questions I ask answered.

Though these challenges can be frustrating and cause much bewilderment I still wouldn't give up these advancements.  If it means I don't have to go back to using the phone all the time I will suffer through the occasional laps in understanding.  I'll just own my random ranting and live with the persona Ms. Communication.