Losing Touch

I usually try to keep this blog light, bright, and polite (social media best practices in case you are wondering). And by usually, I mean every few weeks when I find a few spare minutes to post something. Tonight I’m going to change it up by posting some recent reflections that can’t be summed up in a few adorable photos of Senya.

Picking our little family up and moving west was a difficult choice. In reality, it was our best option on quite a number of levels so it might seem like a no brainer, but in fact, it was hard to uproot and leave so many people that we know so well and love so dearly.

Upon moving out here, I determined to keep in close touch with everyone I love. That has proven to be much more difficult than anticipated.

When I wake up in the mornings, I generally try to spend a few precious moments with Senya and/or Lindsay before getting ready for work and running out the door. I drive my motorcycle to work, so a cell phone call is out of the question. While at work, I don’t have a second of down time. I don’t have a single day in the office that affords me time to write a personal email, duck out to make a 5 minute call, or even send text messages. After work, it’s back on the motorcycle, and then home for a few precious minutes before Senya’s bed time. By the time she’s asleep, so are most of the people I never get to call out east. A three hour time difference didn’t seem like much before we moved (after spending time in East Africa and SouthEast Asia, CA didn’t seem that bad), but it really does make a difference. Add to that the fact that we don’t have enough cell reception in our house to make a phone call. It really is difficult to call people to talk. With work being as demanding as it has been (lots of 14+ hour days recently), there isn’t a lot of time left to sit and write a thoughtful email. When we get some free time, we like to cram it with as much family togetherness and fun as we can.

The end result of everything I’ve written above is that I have really started to lose touch with people from home. People I love. People I don’t want to see fade away. I have found text messages on my phone that are over a month old that came in when I was at the office and I never remembered to reply when I had 10 seconds free from work. I have found voicemails from weeks past that I don’t have time to listen to at work and I don’t have reception enough at home.

Whenever I do get the chance to Skype with someone from home or shoot a few texts back and forth, I am always so happy. I always come away thinking “that was great. I really need to make time for that in my life.” Unfortunately I have not lived up to that enough.

If you are reading this and you are someone who considers me close in your life, please don’t give up on me if I haven’t been good about keeping in touch. Please feel free to keep trying to get in touch with me. I sincerely want to get better about this and any reminders you send will be much appreciated. That said, I can’t promise that I’ll be good at it, so please don’t take it personally if I don’t get back to you right away.

I’ll leave you with a funny story. I was recently emailing a someone about this exact topic. I was explaining why I’ve not been good at keeping in touch and apologizing for not treating them in a manner that reflects the closeness that I feel for them in my heart. He replied to my email and informed me that the google ads on the side bar of his web-based email client read “why men pull away.” HAHAHA. Thank you Google content network for reading our emails and serving us such relevant ads.

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