BenCrowder.net

I got a call yesterday which showed up on my phone as “0000123456.” Usually I don’t answer unknown numbers (since most of the people I know are already in my phone), but my curiosity was piqued (what if it was someone from the Spirit World? ;)). Turns out it was a guy in my ward using Skype. Huh. I wonder if Skype always shows up as that…

Oddness: “0000123456″ and “Skype” are bringing to mind a rainbow and a leprechaun with a pot of gold in my mind right now, and I haven’t the slightest idea why.

But oddness is not what I meant to talk about. This post is supposed to be about my replying-to-e-mail behaviour. (Yes, I’ll use British spellings when I want to. Why not?)

Long story short, I always reply (unless it’s clear that no reply is necessary), but sometimes (er, usually) it takes me a while. I do enjoy writing e-mails, and I love getting them even more. After much analysis in the laboratory of my mind, I’ve come to the conclusion that the reason it takes me a while to respond (in most cases) is that…hmm…well, the jury’s still out. I suppose it has something to do with my other projects and wanting to spend adequate time on them (perhaps my “e-mail time” fills up just with reading the e-mails and so my subconscious tells me there’s no time left to reply). I don’t know. Whatever the case, I certainly mean no offense to anyone by taking weeks to reply. And I don’t like the fact that I’m so slow at times. Maybe that’s why virtually all my penpals stopped replying… ;)

Another thing that may be part of it is that now that I have a blog, I’m more determined to write in it every day than I am to reply to e-mails promptly. It’s the law of numbers, really — one blog post will reach more people, and it’s an almost-okay substitute for an e-mail until I actually get around to replying to the e-mail itself. That’s if they read my blog, though.

One possible solution would be to allocate a set amount of time each day (20 minutes in the morning or something) for replying to e-mails. There are just so many things I want to give time to! Learning languages, art, composing, reading (though these days I’m doing a pretty good job at that), writing, brushing up on my math so I can dive into multivariable calculus and non-Euclidean geometry, yes I’m weird, and so on.

What I’ve ended up doing is rotate my point of focus. Or you could call it going with my moods. :) So when I’m interested in art, I do art. When music compels me, I do music. When languages excite me, I study languages. It’s worked pretty well so far, and the things that really do need to get done aren’t neglected.

But this post is long enough already. Today’ll be a busy day at work, getting the new search up and revising the look and all that. And I meeting with one of the head librarians at the BYU library to talk about librarianship. :)

[tags]Skype[/tags]