Distractions...
Mar. 1st, 2005 07:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpHad to do some scrambling to offset some heavy invoices hitting the store account. The store's okay, but everything else is tapped to the max. The Kazakhstan gig was good for my receivables, but it's hard to pay for stuff with receivables. I am incredibly bummed.
Shannon and Huntür will be leaving with Shannon's parents tomorrow to attend the funeral of a relation in California. More bad news. (Um, look at the bright side: Andrew is not going.)
On the other hand, my mom called yesterday, with the upshot of the conversation being a promise by me to write a letter. (That makes more sense than yelling individual sentences over and over again into the phone.) I sat down and wrote the letter today, and in the course of the writing was struck - as if this isn't something that's as apparent as the nose on one's face - by the utter futility of trying to exchange correspondence by mail.
It's not that it's impossible, just difficult. Email is faster, as is the phone, SMS, AIM, ICQ, etc. and all of them are either free or dirt cheap. I remember a time when calling long-distance was a big deal, because you were committing the big bucks. I remember writing the cost of a phone call to Galina in Moscow in an old address book; it was something like $9.00 for the first couple of minutes, station-to-station, and then something like $3.00 per minute after that. (And those prices are in pre-Jimmy-Carter dollars!)
And did you catch the "station-to-station" in that last sentence? For the longest time, you had a choice of placing a long-distance call either "station-to-station," meaning you'd pay as soon as the receiver was lifted, or "person-to-person," in which the operator would only complete the call if the person you were calling was available at the receiving end.
The modern methods of keeping in touch, for the most part, also leave no "residue" (except maybe email), so one need not feel inhibited by the lack of formatting, spelling, grammar, logic, structure, etc. in a communication. On the one hand, I suppose, the plus is that people do communicate. On the other, the lack of "residue" (i.e., a piece of paper with handwriting on it) means that there's no "paper trail" to look back upon, as might be the case with, say, love letters written in one's youth.
I'm clearly babbling and not making much sense. I'm probably just upset that - besides my parents - there's nobody I can write to that I won't be in touch with either by email or phone before any letter I can write will arrive.
Cheers...
Shannon and Huntür will be leaving with Shannon's parents tomorrow to attend the funeral of a relation in California. More bad news. (Um, look at the bright side: Andrew is not going.)
On the other hand, my mom called yesterday, with the upshot of the conversation being a promise by me to write a letter. (That makes more sense than yelling individual sentences over and over again into the phone.) I sat down and wrote the letter today, and in the course of the writing was struck - as if this isn't something that's as apparent as the nose on one's face - by the utter futility of trying to exchange correspondence by mail.
It's not that it's impossible, just difficult. Email is faster, as is the phone, SMS, AIM, ICQ, etc. and all of them are either free or dirt cheap. I remember a time when calling long-distance was a big deal, because you were committing the big bucks. I remember writing the cost of a phone call to Galina in Moscow in an old address book; it was something like $9.00 for the first couple of minutes, station-to-station, and then something like $3.00 per minute after that. (And those prices are in pre-Jimmy-Carter dollars!)
And did you catch the "station-to-station" in that last sentence? For the longest time, you had a choice of placing a long-distance call either "station-to-station," meaning you'd pay as soon as the receiver was lifted, or "person-to-person," in which the operator would only complete the call if the person you were calling was available at the receiving end.
The modern methods of keeping in touch, for the most part, also leave no "residue" (except maybe email), so one need not feel inhibited by the lack of formatting, spelling, grammar, logic, structure, etc. in a communication. On the one hand, I suppose, the plus is that people do communicate. On the other, the lack of "residue" (i.e., a piece of paper with handwriting on it) means that there's no "paper trail" to look back upon, as might be the case with, say, love letters written in one's youth.
I'm clearly babbling and not making much sense. I'm probably just upset that - besides my parents - there's nobody I can write to that I won't be in touch with either by email or phone before any letter I can write will arrive.
Cheers...
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no subject
Date: 2005-03-02 03:46 am (UTC)I do (or did) really like writing letters, mostly to the folks. I like having their letters now, even though Dad typed his. Emails just don't bring the same reconnection after someone is gone.