Lately, I’ve been feeling a bit guilty about my sharing habits with my girlfriends, because I’ve realized I favor certain communication methods over others, and it’s mostly up to chance on who I will communicate with next, and how. So I am finding myself saying more often, “Did I tell you about this?” and being surprised that I didn’t (and feeling that guilt).
Ha ha, let me explain. First of all, I feel very lucky to have several close girlfriends*, and secondly, I usually don’t have anything “important” to communicate with them**. Just my typical day-to-day blatherings.
But who I talk with, and how, changes on a day-to-day basis, so what gets shared with whom does as well.
I prefer in-person communication above all other. But we can’t see our friends every day, can we? So after that, I really like google chat, cause it’s easier to type using a keyboard, than texting. And it’s live communication. Then, email is nice. And texting is good too***, but some things are just too much to put in a text.
So, it’s all very obvious, but I have just been thinking about how the people I see in person, tend to get news the soonest, then maybe someone I google chat with, or write an email to, and so on. Ha, notice that phone calls were not on that list? I only call my mother and grandmothers.
Which… brings me to the point of this whole post (long arse intro, huh?!). My parents were in town this weekend and we had such a nice visit with them. The four of us did things together, as well as spending time with other people, but I also had the chance to have some one-on-one time with my mom and dad, separately.
You guys know that I get that one-on-one time with my dad quite often when I see him, because the two of us work out together. And I truly cherish that time with him. I gossip away, and when I shut up, I get to hear what is going on in his life, ha ha.
But I rarely, RARELY, get that one-on-one time with my mother. Like… I can’t remember the last time I did before this weekend. When I am around her, there are almost always other people there, too. And she is usually busy, taking care of people! And when I call, she is often on the go, or around other people.
So, to have that time with her, was just fantastic. We talked about a lot of different things I know we never would have, had we not been one-on-one.
Sigh, I realized though, that I am horrible about keeping them up to date in things that are going on in my personal life****. You know, the things I started out this blog post talking about – the day-to-day blatherings. At least that made me feel better about how quickly I share them with my girlfriends, as I was updating my parents on things that happened over the entire last year!
With whom would you like some more one-on-one time?
*and interestingly, mostly from different social groups – not many are friends with one another
**as in, why do I even feel guilty if they are missing out on my dramz? ha ha
***and really fantastic for keeping in touch, just not sharing long stories, hee hee
****really, just talking about small things here – I tell them “important” news
I don’t think that’s that unusual. Like my friends at work probably know a lot more about what’s going on with me day-to-day than my closer friends because I don’t see the latter as often. Same with my friends who are on Facebook versus my friends not on Facebook.
Sounds like you and your mom should make a resolution to make more one-on-one time together next year!
Yeah, I bet a lot of people are this way (except I am not that way at work except with one gal – I learned my lesson there)!
That is a fab idea. I should ask if we can go get chai lattes, just us two!
I like your “Iowa Runner” t-shirt. I wonder if they have those for Chicago? Anyway, T-mobile used to have a way where I could text message someone directly using the T-mobile website, but they recently removed that feature. I sometimes hate the back and forth texting when I have to use my phone since the “keys” are so small and it takes so long to write a simple message. Prefer e-mail or twitter on my PC.
They have them for Illinois, at least: http://www.goneforarun.com/Illinois_Running_Gifts_s/1316.htm
I have been wondering if there is a way to text from my laptop. I think you can for iMessage if you have an Apple computer? Alas, I don’t, so I am stuck using the small keys as well 🙂
My sister for sure…and my folks too…I don’t remember the last time I had one on one time with my folks, and with my sister we usually are with ALL of the family, so it’s hard to catch up.
I rarely get one-on-one time w/ either of my parents. I’m glad you are able to so often w/ your dad and recently w/ your mom! It’s definitely a different way of spending time w/ a person when it’s just the two of you.
I find that as I’m getting older, one-on-one time with my Mom, especially, had become very important to me. She’s not very good with technology and phone calls are fine since she lives so far away, but I really cherish time with her and, like you, it’s not very often that it’s just the two of us.
I don’t have too many people that know what I’m doing on a day-to-day basis (I’m happy that you’re usually one of them), but I feel like technology has made it so easy to keep the world at large generally updated with my daily banality, whether they like it or not. In fact, it’s hard to make sure that the people that don’t use Facebook or check email very regularly have all of the information they need about things.
I should get you on my g-chat list. I didn’t know you preferred that method 😉 I use it all the time!
I’m really bad at sharing or keeping in touch in general, really bad!! The nice thing is a lot of my friends I can meet after a long time and its like we seen each other a few days ago…we just have lots to talk about.
With Data, of course! I’d tell him all my secrets and fill him in on everything. 🙂
Aww! Data says “don’t tease me!” You know how much he misses you :-*