SOOOO Impersonal

The other day I get an e-mail in my inbox, the address said "incoming.verizon.net", and the subject just said "FWD, FWD, FWD".  In my world it looked an awful lot like SPAM!  I'm so paranoid about getting a virus that I quickly stuck it in my SPAM folder and deleted it, never giving it another thought, until today.  Today I open my inbox to find a similar e-mail with the same address, only this time the subject line has a women's name in it.  Weird, I think to myself, and just on a hunch checked our ward directory online to see if this was a person in my ward.  SHOW NUF it was.  So against my better judgement I opened the strange e-mail.  It was addressed to me, with my name spelled correctly (that hardly ever happens), and basically said not to worry about this woman (the one in the subject line) someone else took care of it.  Took care of WHAT? I ask??  The person who sent this e-mail is someone I have never met, so I sent her back an e-mail asking what in the world she was talking about.

Now, to give you a little background, I have a new calling in our ward, it's Assistant Compassionate Service Leader.  I have never met the actual Compassionate Service Leader, and have no idea what this calling entails.  So I guess it's safe to assume (there I go ASS-U-ME-ING again) that this whole e-mail had something to do with my new calling.

So now I sit and ponder...how is it that we have come so far as to not be able to pick up the phone and call someone?  I am guilty of shooting an e-mail off, or Facebooking (is that a verb?) someone instead of calling them.  I think in certain instances it is all that is required. However it's nice to hear a voice on the end of the line sometimes, it's nice to hear the tones of their remarks so you know how they really feel instead of reading a computer screen and getting it completely wrong.  This woman may be a perfectly nice person but right now all I see is a screen telling me that I've dropped the 'ball'!!

I also have to ponder the fact that maybe that's exactly what she was doing, reprimanding me.  It's much easier to do over e-mail than it is in person, you can completely dehumanize someone and just give them the third degree without any guilt and then later, when you may be feeling some guilt, pretend that they read WAY too much into that particular e-mail.

So my goal for this week is to call people if I need to talk to them.  I'm not saying I'm cutting off e-mail or Facebook completely just hoping that I can reconnect with those around me and "Reach out and touch someone!".