Too Much Activity

I go through fluctuating periods of being annoyed with too much phone activity or being insecure about the activity becoming stalled. Either of these things don’t seem healthy. I’m not saying that is true for everyone but I feel it is true for myself.

I suppose it depends on who I am writing to through text messaging. I have 2 long distance friends I consider myself reasonably close with, but I don’t always talk to them everyday. They have their own lives and one of them lives in a vastly different time zone from me. I am not always aware what they’re up to every hour of the day and nor would I wish to know. I’m not implying whatever they are doing is unimportant either, just I don’t necessarily need to know everything about a person’s daily activities or speak to the person frequently throughout their day to feel like I have a valid friendship with the person.

I can be fine juggling three text conversations at the same time if I have the energy for it. Some days I just don’t have the appropriate attention span. For example, last night a friend messaged me asking me how my day was. It was about 9:30 PM, so not late at all, but I was in the middle of getting ready to read a new book on my Kindle. I saw the message notification and read the blurb on it though I did not open the chat. Instead I powered off my phone for the night. I don’t typically turn off my mobile that early in the night, however, it was a situation where I thought, You know what, it’s not that I don’t care about replying. I just need downtime where I have no interruptions when I’ve already decided to invest my time in something other than my phone. And I’m sure the friend didn’t mean to be intrusive in any way by sending me the text message. But, I also don’t think I need to apologize for not making myself instantly available every time someone messages me, especially as I am not obligated to do it.

As for the insecurity when the phone activity gets slow, such as passing several hours without a new email or message ping, I would say being bored or not having enough stimuli in my immediate evironment probably triggers the feeling in me. I’m pretty selective with notifications too. I hate game notifications so those are always off no matter what. Continuous email syncing can drain a lot of battery and I only put it on if I’m checking my inbox manually. Facebook Messenger notifications are always on, but half the time I read the messages on the banner notifications only and respond later. I have WhatsApp and Line for messaging and hardly ever use them. There was a family Line chat I was part of, though I left because everyone in there shared too much crap, like virtual videos and health articles. The flux of activity from that chat in one day was too much, particularly since I didn’t really care to look at the stuff that was being shared. When I don’t hear from certain friends for a couple of days, I do feel insecure but I’m not sure why. I don’t have that problem with my long distance friends. Maybe I believe in having more frequent contact with friends I could potentially meet up with in real life? Or that I need to keep up a pretense to look like I have a lot going on when I don’t?