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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Replying to @fozmeadows
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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Replying to @fozmeadows
Even without those issues, it's easy to feel unsettled or inadequate about effectively typing into a void without a guaranteed insta-reply.
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Replying to @fozmeadows
But it's important to try and remember that it's okay to be slow, to step back, to engage at your own pace, to engage in sporadic contact.
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None of that makes you a bad friend or a bad person: it's just physically impossible to keep up to date all the time with everybody online.
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Replying to @fozmeadows
And I think that's a reminder we could all use sometimes, because of how easy it is to trick ourselves into thinking otherwise. FIN.
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