I'm kind of a bad texter / emailer and it's never bothered me too much, but now it's to the point where I feel it's one of the top things holding me back from both fulfilling friendships and professionally in my creative pursuits. How can I overcome this?
I experience a ton of resistance around correspondence-related tasks to the point where I avoid them and miss out on some opportunities and experiences, and my inaction is starting to annoy me.
I'm not depressed (anymore, yay!), I'm not an introvert, but I am a bit shy and a perfectionist when it comes to writing, and it takes me a while to get a message out. I'm fine with broadcast style stuff (twitter & instagram stories & mefi questions are fine) but one on one conversations, especially digitally, are really draining to me. I have a hard time keeping up with friends I'd like to see, or proactively reach out / respond regarding anything in my creative life especially if it requires putting myself out there, or talking to anyone where there's some amount of history / emotional baggage. I'm pretty good with acquaintances and reaching out to completely fresh contacts, but responding to long term friends or even people I've known a while in the creative community feels way too hard and overwhelming, even if I'm not at all displeased with the person! It usually takes multiple ignored texts from them and a small mountain of dedicated effort to get myself to respond.
It's definitely easier when there's some obvious structure / reason / content I am trying to communicate - for example the other day I remembered to follow up with someone who had wanted an introduction to someone in my city for an event, when I saw the event is in fact happening and announced - so that was an easy trigger to go say hey how are you, glad to see that thing is happening!
I know a lot of other people are bad at this too based on the fraction of people who manage to keep up with me in the fashion I'm describing, so it's normal, but at the same time I imagine this is hackable and improvable. If you have gotten better at this particular skill, please share what helped! |
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