#Art text message professional#
I now spend a majority of my adulthood juggling various tasks, errands, and personal and professional responsibilities. Gone are the days of lengthy, meandering phone calls made to fill the space of adolescent boredom. As I offered more of myself through text messaging, something I’d previously felt familiar with and comfortable doing only in person, my friendships also blossomed like never before. We granted one another the space and grace to gradually unfurl my rage.Īnd so I finally surrendered to the form, texting with my whole heart about my struggles adapting to country living and my newfound loneliness and isolation.
“I got the opportunity to learn what I think from writing to you.” “It gave me perspective,” my friend said, reflecting on our exchange. In more than eight years of our steadily growing friendship, I learned more about her during that text conversation than I had any other time. For three days and through dozens of hefty paragraphs, we granted one another the space and grace to gradually unfurl my rage, anxiety, and shame before shifting to her own inner battles. When I received an aggressive comment from a stranger online that sent me spiraling down, I messaged another close friend. To my surprise and delight, my lengthy texts were met with thoughtful lengthy responses.
My first message went to my cousin and childhood best friend in Vietnam. With my friends more than a six-hour drive away and phone calls and Zoom meetings demanding more of my time and attention than ever before, I began composing novel-length texts consisting of three paragraphs or more, often sent in a single message bubble. Craving the in-person, in-real-time conversations I once took for granted, I now see how text messages can bridge the gaping disconnect imposed by the pandemic and draw my loved ones and I closer together. My days felt longer, my nights almost infinite. No longer bound to the frantic ebb and flow of the city’s constant activity, time suddenly stretched forever. I found myself surrounded by trees and sequestered from my friends, colleagues, and the barista who knew my latte order by heart. I now see how text messages can bridge the gaping disconnect imposed by the pandemic.īut at the end of last year, my husband and I abruptly moved out of our Brooklyn apartment to a new home in upstate New York. Once sacred and profound, language was becoming increasingly commercialized with artificial intelligence that invaded my sentences, my thoughts with predictive text and autocompletion, and companies bombarding my phone with messages of sales announcements and coupon codes. As this communication method grew in complexity and popularity, my mild dislike metamorphosed into an aggressive aversion. Text messaging, on the other hand, always seemed more like fast food, trivial bite-size bits consumed as quickly as they’re disregarded. Whether on the house phone or my cellular flip phone, I’d grown to associate these calls with intimacy. Fortunately, my mother has since recovered, but I often wonder why she chose to deliver such shattering news not over the phone but through text.Īs a millennial, some of my fondest memories consist of hours-long phone conversations with my high school best friend. Then one evening, I received a text message from her, informing us in her typical understated fashion that she was sick, unable to breathe, and didn’t think she would make it through the night. Ever true to the Vietnamese parental philosophy of not burdening others with one’s own suffering, my mother withheld her illness from my sister and me.
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