Simultaneously, there's anxiety about US being ignored or forgotten which preys on both cognitive dissonance and our own self-doubt. Viz:
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Replying to @fozmeadows
Either we know our own good reasons for belated emails etc but assume malice/dislike in others, or fear we didn't try hard enough to matter.
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Replying to @fozmeadows
This can easily become paralyzing: there's so many people we could potentially be talking to, it often feels like we're letting them down.
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Replying to @fozmeadows
But listen: I'm here to tell you that's bullshit. Even if you had all the time of a letter-writing aristocrat in 18th C. Britain, bullshit.
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Replying to @fozmeadows
Firstly, our social nets now are so much wider & more varied in terms of the type of contact/connection they involve, it's unprecedented.
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Replying to @fozmeadows
Think about the digital/emotional codeswitching necessary to, for instance, go from talking to relatives on FB vs fandom buddies on tumblr.
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Replying to @fozmeadows
It's not the same thing in practice, because it's a different type of written communication for a different type of emotional content.
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Replying to @fozmeadows
So beating yourself up because one type of connection is easy, so why can't you just do the others, too? It's not you: they are different!
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Replying to @fozmeadows
At the same time, we connect with so many different people that keeping in daily or weekly contact with all of them is LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE.
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Replying to @fozmeadows
And not just because of the aforementioned time-limits: communication is two-way, and EVERYONE HAS TIME FOR DIFFERENT LEVELS OF ENGAGEMENT.
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Even if you could message everyone you cared about all the time, there's no guarantee they'd all be able to reply in the same timeframe.
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Replying to @fozmeadows
But the theoretical immediacy of digital contact gives the impression that everyone must be available at all times, & that we must be, too.
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Replying to @fozmeadows
Particularly for those of us who have mental health/anxiety issues, worrying we've failed or been abandoned by our friends can nag at us.
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