Tons of Texts

I often find myself “bored” at work. I live in a constant attention generation, a check-your-phone-every-ten-minutes type of life. I wonder what it was like before phones. What an eight hour shift would be like every single day with no outside stimulation. Of course the work they were doing 30 years ago might not be quite as dull as what I do. I do spend a lot of time at work without my phone. I take time to doodle on notepads, try to make things out of trash, and learn new skills. Right now I’m working on learning some drumming patterns. A large part of work is learning new Swahili words, but I use my phone for that.

With my phone I can do things like that. Find new words to learn, look at friends’ photos, google things I want to learn, and text people. When I grew up we had instant messaging services. They were all people did. I think of the time spent on the computer just chatting away late into the night. How did I have so many things to say? IMing has just turned into texting now though. Still I wonder how I have so many things to say.

Some days though I need something to ponder, something to keep my mind working on. I try to think of something thought provoking, a question. Then I spam it out to everyone that I think will reply. I always have a competition in my mind to see who has the best reply. Almost every time it is Seth; he knows my sense of humor though. This last question I sent was a simple one. “How would you describe yourself in one word? How would you describe me in one word?”

It’s a two part question for a simple reason. No one wants to describe themselves, and it makes my thirst for viewpoints on me seem less vain. The replies were as expected, generally self deprecating towards themselves and overselling me. I have humble, sweet friends though, so it’s alright. I will say a few I got about me that I had to ponder over: esoteric, beautiful, inquisitive, zigzag, gentle, and renaissance.

Once again I think these words oversell me quite a bit. I can see threads of the meaning in my life though, so I can understand it. Zigzag confused me; I had to ask Alonzo what it meant. This is what he said: “You go where you go, tough to follow but fun to try. Always changing, progressing but pulled in different directions.” It’s nice to have friends that know you well. That understand your oddities.

So one day if you get a text from me with an odd question, ponder it. Come up with a real response and know that I will be thinking over what you say for the rest of the day. I’m glad I have a phone at work — the ability to deepen my useless knowledge of things that will only matter to me and my incessant non-resting mind.