It's like blah, blah, blah

There used to be a time when I had at least one long email writing session a day. Meaning one huge long conversation email exchanged back and forth with a friend. That friend always rotated of course, as people came in and out of my life, but it was something I felt a connection to and built up a habit with. I stopped for awhile though, maybe because my main email buddies did their thing, or I did mine, but now I'm sort of back in the habit and I find that I really missed it. I occasionally go through this apparently, this detachment from personal emails.

I think I communicate so much better via email, and writing, I've realized I prefer it oftentimes.

Along those same lines, I used to have certain phone calls I'd make every day. Some to just say hi and check in. Some to shoot the shit. But again, that disappeared somewhere along the way too. And now that I'm trying to become a phone person again, I've discovered that I've lost the knack for it. The phone became a communication tool instead of a conversation device. A quick three minute call to set up something to do, ten seconds to say "I'm here, where are you?" But never any long phone calls anymore. There was a time when 1500 minutes a month was just barely enough (just daytime minutes mind you) and now I'm not even close to using up my 450 a month. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I kind of liked being a phone person, sort of.

I do dislike the "What did you do today?" phone call though. It smacks too much of just retelling often mundane events that usually border on the uninteresting. I'm not one of those people who can really relate in an interesting way what I do on the daily and unless the other person can, I kind of mentally zone out sometimes. I realize, however, that this is possibly an important aspect of maintaining a relationship. Both relationships and Relationships. This is where I think technology could really help me. Someone can just see what I've been up to by following along on Twitter or the moblog and I can do the same. Then if that sparks any fun conversation, perfect! Basically this is my weak PSA for Twittering, Loopting, and moblogging.

One thing that I am psyched about recently is that as I turn my attention to reading and writing, I have some (new) people to share that with. It requires someone who reads, of course, but also someone who wants to write, wants to explore, and more importantly, wants to share and critique. The one thing I've never experienced is having writing buddies, or a writing circle. I've taken one writing class in all my life, a children's story class at UCSD, and I found the experience novel, if not terribly helpful. It's hard to say negative things about someone's story when you barely know them.

You would think it's easier to critique (even constructively) a stranger's work but I found that in a classroom setting, everyone just pulls their punches and keeps this distance from actually engaging in talking about someone's work. Or maybe this was just the case with this particular class. I do recall a poetry class I took and this one guy said that "cacophony" should never be used in a poem. It was my poem of course and I was initially like, "Oh, duly noted." Then I thought about whether or not I actually respected this guy's opinion -- his poems were good -- and decided that I really didn't because I knew nothing about him. Plus, how can you say a word should never be used? It's all subjective isn't it? Then again, in retrospect, he was right. "Cacophony" should never have been used in that poem. For sures.