How to interact with Steve, a guide by Steve. Part Two: I haven't heard from Steve in a while...

When it comes to keeping up with people, I am about as bad as it gets. Being something other than a social butterfly, when I get home at night I don't think about people I need to keep up with, I collapse on my couch and try to recharge from a long day of pretending I'm a competent social person. It's kind of ironic that my current job is all about maintaining lines of communication between myself, others, and between those other people.

Let me explain this with an example. I play Pathfinder with a group of people that I like. One of my best friends is a part of this group and I enjoy conversing with him a great deal. Outside of that game, how often do you think I talk to him? If you answered "basically never", then you're catching on. One of my best friends, basically don't talk to him outside of the game. So if you haven't heard from me in a while, it's almost certainly not you.

If I'm going to contact someone, typically I am doing so for a specific purpose: dinner, movie, Capoeira, etc. Contacting someone for the purpose of saying, "what's up?" just isn't something I do like ever. It's not because I don't care, it's because I just don't do that sort of thing. If you're sitting there waiting for me to contact you, you are like to be disappointed. Unfortunately, this is a problem because when I do think I should contact someone I haven't heard from, I have no idea what to say; thanks to the anxiety of saying something wrong, I will not immediately contact that person and then I will be stuck trying to think up something to say which makes me anxious, and I will eventually either give up or more likely forget. Sometimes you haven't heard from me because I'm so anxious about what to say I can't say anything.

Just because I am not contacting you does not mean that I am not thinking of you. I have friends I rarely talk to that I still consider to be dear friends. There are people I haven't talked to in at this point years that I consider to be my friends still. Even if it is only when the winds of fate blow you and me in a coincidentally similar direction that I talk to you, if I do spend time talking to you, I probably wouldn't mind talking to you more.

There's one snag, of course, that being I hate phones. I did many years of tech support for an ISP, and that soured me on the idea of phones. I don't like talking on phones, I don't like being called, and I almost never call people on my own initiative. If I want an appointment, say a dental appointment, I am far more likely to show up in person to set up an appointment than to call, because I hate phones that much. I use phones to set up in person meetings. Beyond that, I don't call people. Text messages, emails, other forms of electronic interaction, that's fine and I have no problem with them, so they are my preferred communication methods outside of just actually talking face to face.

So what does this mean for you interacting with me? Don't wait for me to call you, just call me or, preferably, text or email me. I won't screen your call unless I cannot take your call, and if you call I will call you back as promptly as time allows. I'm not chatty on phones, but if you want to call me I will talk to you. I work, I have extra-workular activities, but I can make time for you. So call me, maybe? (Take that pop culture!)