Joelle said in the early morning on June 4, 2007
I hate the phone. No, really, I hate to talk on the phone. Ask just about anyone — talked to me on the phone lately? Was it more than 5 minutes? You must have won the lottery this month.
Of course, for business I absolutely will talk on the phone. It’s a necessity, in fact. I like my clients to hear my voice, connect with me and feel comfortable. Those sorts of phone calls are fine because they have a beginning, an end and a purpose. But, when it comes to social calls? Feh. With so much going on these days, there’s nothing that bugs me more than someone calling just to “hang out” on the phone.
I’m not sure when this started. I used to be Super Phone Girl™, especially when I lived in Texas. It stands to reason it was because I lived far away and needed the connection. Yet now, I’d really just prefer an email. My work day begins at 6:30am and often doesn’t end until 8pm or 9pm at night — sometimes later. It’s just how it is when you are in the first five years of a self-run business… sometimes beyond. Such is life.
Unfortunately, one of my oldest, very dear friends refuses to hear me when I ask for him not to call me during my work day. I must have asked three or four times for him not to call me at 7am because I’m not only not awake yet, I’m trying to get my bearings for the workday. I’m responding to email during that time, why don’t you send me one of those?, I’d say. But inevitably, the phone would ring again and again and again. Eventually, I stopped answering it. I started responding with texts suggesting that the best way to reach me is via email, but an email never came and the phone calls graduated to mid-day.
Once in a while, I’d answer, but then we’d just sit there. There was no specific reason for the call — just to chat, catch up and so forth. I love to chat and catch up, but could we do it over lunch or a drink some night? Do we have to do it on the phone? The argument is I’m always busy and they can’t get me on the phone in order to make plans. Well, then send me an email and I’ll schedule it!
Last night, my phone rang at 10pm. Now, call me Grandma Moses, but in my family growing up, you just don’t call people past 9pm. I do realize that it’s 2007 and times have changed, but when you know I get up for work at 6am, why are you calling me at 10pm at night? And to that end, why are you not respecting my wishes? Why? I feel as though he is not hearing me, that his convenience is more important than my meager request to send me an email instead of calling.
This leads me to feel guilt because I love my friends so much, especially this one. He’s like a brother to me, but it’s not 1998 anymore and I have things to do. It’s just not the old days. Before I moved to Texas in 1999, this friend and I were joined at the hip. I’d get home from working for The Man at 5:30pm, he’d call and we’d go out to karaoke or go to dinner almost 5 nights a week. Then I moved to Texas, he moved to another country and I rarely spoke to him for almost 4 years. Once in a great while he’d send me an email and I think he called me once. This was fine with me! I understood he was half a world away and had his own things he needed to do. Time did not stop while he was away.
When you get older, friendships are harder to maintain. They do take work — I won’t deny that, but it’s just not like post-college, Reality Bites, skanking-in-the-quickie-mart-to-My-Sherona days of yore. It’s just not. Everyone has careers and relationships and some even have kids and pets and a billion other things they’re trying to do. I know my friends are my friends without having to call them on the phone to confirm it. Hell, I think Kathy and I talk on the phone less than 5 times a year and she’s the ying to my yang. I am closer to her than anyone.
I feel insensitive, as though by not answering my phone I’m being a bad friend. And if we got on the phone and there was something specific he wanted to talk about, if he needed me, if he said, “I really need to talk / a friend / you right now”, I would drop everything and be there for him. I might not be so frustrated. But don’t just call me up and sit there. Time is money, dude. It’s a hideous callous phrase, but when your workday is scheduled to the hilt, it’s just how it goes. Furthermore, don’t leave me a voicemail saying “call me back” either. Tell me what it is you want so I can be prepared when I call you back. If you’re just calling to chat, then say that!
Is it just me? Do you find that you talk to your friends on the phone less than you did when you were younger? Do you find that certain people in your life refuse to acknowledge that your relationships have evolved (or de-evolved as the case may be)? Do you feel talking on the phone less has made a difference in your relationships or has it just been survival of the fittest?
Joelle said around mid-morning on June 3, 2007
(To anyone who is a city employee, it’s nothing personal.)
Dear Orange-Clad San Diego City Employees,
I and many others live on a hillside with streets that go one-way, dead end, don’t connect all the way through and are otherwise a labyrinth of traffic logic. When, on a Saturday morning, you decide to block off the one-way street that leads to our apartment building to tar the road, would it not be best to make haste? Sitting with your butts on the railing, chit-chatting over a smoke with your three other slacker colleagues while your truck with the two-way flashing arrows idles violently, spewing pollution, telling me I’m shit out of luck if I want to go home, is not really making the most of taxpayer dollars, now is it?
In the future, I recommend putting up a sign suggesting a detour so we don’t drive all over hell and back trying to find a super secret side street that meanders through the hills, hitting dead-end after dead-end and creatively cursing when gasoline is $3.89 a gallon. I also might suggest alerting the neighborhood that you even intend to tar the street. You know, so people can stop their lives for half a Saturday while you do so.
Thanks for fixing the crack, though.
xo,
Joelle
Joelle said in the early morning on June 2, 2007 while listening to Bebel Gilberto - Azul
Good morning, my little chickadees! 
Before I run off to the post office, I wanted to make a few notes about the site and all that meta-type juju.
Firstly, I fixed my RSS feed, so it should be working just swimmingly now. If you would prefer to use atom, that can be arranged, so let me know and I’ll slap it in there, too, though RSS should do quite nicely. (Tip: you can also use the “Bookmark” button on the left to add this site to just about any bookmark/social networking service around. They have a bunch listed and you can do it with just a couple clicks!)
Secondly, I’ve added tags and ditched categories completely. It’s kind of an experiment, as categories felt so limiting and to put it bluntly, were a pain in my ass. To the curb with them, I say! I’m digging the tags, so it’ll be interesting to see how that pans out.
The word “thirdly” seems weird, so I’ll just keep going…
You don’t have to register anymore to comment here, but it’s encouraged if you don’t feel like filling out your goodies all the time. I have also dumped the “upload your own whack avatar” feature and opted to use the handy tools available to me through gravatars. This site is gravatar-enabled, so if you don’t have one, get one! They are handy-dandy!
For those of you who aren’t familiar with gravatars, you can assign a global avatar (that little icon next to your name in the comments) to your email address (for free) through their website. Then, when you comment on sites that are gravatar-enabled (like this one!) and use that email address, presto! Your avatar appears automatically.
Isn’t technology grand? We have no flying cars, but by god, we have gravatars.
Joelle said around mid-afternoon on June 1, 2007 while listening to Elis Regina - Aguas de Marco
As I was saying… Hm. What was I saying? After all this I find myself completely drawing a blank. I was hoping I would be inspired with some totally bowl-you-over anecdote chock full of hilarity for my re-entry into blogging, but I can’t think of anything. Me, with nothing to say. Stop the presses!!! Hm. I think I just need to rip off the first post band-aid and hope it starts to flow again. There’s no way to count the times I’ve said “Oh, god, I totally need to blog this!” in the past year, but alas… I suppose we could start with where the hell I’ve been… let’s!
During my resurrection of this site I discovered that it had been one year ago Memorial Day weekend since I took my break from blogging. I didn’t think it would be a whole year; I really though I would just do a redesign, but so much happened and to be honest, I had a bit o’ the burnout. But! Things are on the upswing and I’m ready to start spouting my usual assorted rubbish publicly again. Lucky you!
I have tons of archives dating back to January 22, 2003 — the day I opened up shop here, but over time I’ve learned that I don’t necessarily need all my cheese hanging in the wind, so I’m going to be reviewing my archives by year and opening the entries as I do so. If you’re interested in some of my back entries (which I understand some are — hey, I like that one about the PMS grocery store meltdown, too!), those will be reappearing here and there, so be sure to check the archives. (I’m having a little trouble with my RSS feed, so if you happen to need that, please try again soon. I’ll get it all worked out.) It’s all good — subscribe to RSS at will!
Let’s see… for those who don’t know, mikey and I broke up a while back, but please hold your sympathies. While it is much appreciated and totally understandable, we’re very good friends and that’s the most important thing. There’s nothing to be sad about; we get along better now than ever before. No one did anything to anyone, no one is at fault, no one is a jerk, so there is no need to speculate. It just didn’t work. But, he’s like my family and we hang out frequently, so no boo hoo-ing, please. Please? It makes it awkward because we’re not sad about this anymore.
Whew, I’m glad that’s done. I was dreading that, for some reason. Ok… NEXT!
I’m living in a great apartment downstairs from my friend, who is no longer blogging, but I’ll still refer to her as GFI (Girl from Ipanema) for those who may recall. This place is the bees knees and I love it sooooo much. I wake up every morning to a magnificent view and sit out in the evenings to watch the sunset while drinking wine and talking trash with GFI in our favorite bar called Our Front Yard.
Moxie Design Studios is still doing very well. Better than well! You can look around and see that, I guess. Order our book! Mama needs a new pair o’ bras! I’m really excited about it, though. It’s been a little scary, writing a book for the first time, but we quickly got over it and have been having a blast. We hope y’all like it, too. It’s definitely not the kind of tech book your dad would read. (The cocktail recipes and gossip are worth the price of admission.)
I’m sure I’ll have something dazzling to say next time, but I wanted to get this first post out of the way. I’m happy to be blogging again, I missed it. I missed you guys! If you’re still out there, leave a comment and say hi, won’t you? And tell me what your favorite toothpaste is because I weirdly like to know these things.
Joelle said at some point on January 29, 2007
This photo made Explore at #214 on 1/29/07
While leaving CVS, I was intercepted by this woman in the parking lot. Her name is Michael Lob, pronounced… you got it… Michelob. She said "Michael for short". She was from Austria, was once a teacher, a practitioner of healing arts, and clearly lonely and quite senile. She asked me if I was a teacher because I am wearing a t-shirt that says "old school" and asked me how old my school was (which I found so charming, I could barely stand it).
She was selling these books she’d written and self-published, which were primarily gibberish or perhaps just artistic tangents by someone who has lived a very long life full of many things. Her clothes were mismatched and worn, her teeth were extremely yellowed, but she had so much personality and such kind and determined eyes, that I found myself standing there for 40 minutes listening to her tell me story after story about nothing and everything all at once.
She tried to sell me a book and some of her self-proclaimed "abstract art" (which she is proudly displaying in the photo — she wanted to make sure I got it all in). I knew that book would just end up in the trash or collecting dust on a shelf, so I gave her all the cash I had on me and told her to hang on to the books to sell to someone else, but she wouldn’t hear of it.
She gave me an orange book (not pictured) titled "Human Happenings", then she sang me a song about Easter Island that she wrote, gave me a well-worn cut-out piece of paper listing spices and herbs that heal that had been photocopied since 1972. She also made up a song about my name (something involving French, she said) and included a ‘bookmark’ with an angel on it that she had made from construction paper and a clipping from an old Reader’s Digest.
As I stood with one foot on my car floorboard and one on the pavement, inching ever closer to leaving, I asked if I could take her photo. There was something remarkable about this woman, this immigrant, this elderly eccentric free-spirited teacher that made me want to remember her. I snapped several without her realizing it, as "they don’t make any sound!", but she insisted that she pose, displaying her works and she stood back and smiled, head high and proud.
Despite my desire and repeated efforts to go home and not stand in the parking lot of CVS forever, I stood. I stood and I listened while this sweet, yet slightly crazy woman rambled and laughed at her own jokes. Why? Because she made eye contact with me and there was something there that said, "Please listen."
So, I did. And despite my discomfort, I’m better for it.
Moxie Design Studios™