Quote from the news: Are we there or not?

"You hear so much about how instantly reachable we all are, how hyperconnected, with our smartphones, laptops, tablets and such. But the maddening truth is that we’ve become so accessible we’re often inaccessible, the process of getting to any of us more tortured and tortuous than ever."

Great article, or maybe more opinion piece, by Frank Bruni in New York Times, about how difficult it has become to reach each other.  It is really true.  I monitor 3 e-mail addresses several times a day, have 2 more I check sometimes, and one cell phone, and one home phone.  I do not text, twitter or do facebook... so people know that they should e-mail me.  I have a work phone with an answering machine I rarely check (few messages on it). I am on Skype, sometimes, used to be on all the time, but it got too interrupty. I write comments on blogs and Flickr... there is many many snippets of communication going on, all the time.

It used to be that phone answering machines were checked often, now they can stay unchecked for days.  I strongly believe that we are so connected that we feel the need to hide, to disconnect, or we won't have time to do anything.  But, if anybody in my family calls my cell, I will call back as soon as I can, always.  But do we really need all of this?  My most precious communication events are the dining room conversations here at home, handwritten letters and notes sent to me, and long, thoughtful e-mails from friends and family.  None of those can be done on Skype, twitter, texting (SMS), Facebook, phone answering machines... it would just become to short and fragmented. 

Maybe it has become so easy to communicate that we no longer think about what we write.  In the old days, when you had to dip the pen into the ink every few seconds, you had more time to think, to formulate, and decide what to say and not to say.  These days you just throw things out there. And there are so many things thrown out there, that your message might be drowning, severely, unless someone really, really cares about what you have to say at that particular moment. But, maybe we often don't even have the time to care even if we wanted to, because we are stressed animals with too many distractions and too much to do... running around in circles trying to make ends and time meet.