RantWoman, God, and the Still Didn't Get the Memo Committee on Email Immoderation are feeling called to hold worship sharing with the, oops well, Care and Counsel Committee at RantWoman's Meeting about the subject of email. RantWoman proposes to serve as Recording clerk and to record minutes of much exercise in a separate entry. RantWoman is still seasoning the matter of what queries to begin with.
RantWoman hopes that God shows up in words, but notes a peculiar God historical tendency to show up in burning bushes, pillars of cloud, commandments etched in stone tablets, plagues, pestilence, planetary inundations, and sundry other difficult to parse manifestations.
RantWoman is not sure which members of the Still Didn't Get the Memo Committee... are going to show up, but the committee includes a particularly large membership with a number of different qualifications:
--Generic Customer Service Friend
--Veteran Tech Support "Users always Lie; They don't know they lie; they don't mean to lie but they Lie. Now what was that symptom again?" Friend.
--Mental Health Triage Friend
--Out of Control Spiritual Accompaniment Friend
--Data Nerd / What is trending over time Friend
--Lots of ways to agree about measures to make email manageable but not sending is not an option Friend.
--Language Nerd and Literature Scholar Friend
--Magical Realism So what if the timelines are non-linear Friend
--You're always asleep when I'm awake Friend
--You barely know me and I barely know you but I am supposed to know you are a resource Friend
--It takes days and days of phone tag to reach you Friend
--I actually think sort of slowly and LIKE being able to use my search engine to think over bits of the conversation again Friend
--If you don't understand something, have you considered asking for clarification? Friend
--If you don't understand something, who might you refer the problem to Friend?
--Look, really sorry the message is not coming in palatable form but have you considered that it might be your job either to figure it out or to connect the sender withsomeone who can Friend
--I talk about Service Dogs all the time. You think I don't know when to quit aboutservice DOGS. How about we talk about service CHICKENS? Friend
--Really sorry God is not showing up on your schedule Friend.
--You say you dislike email but you actually do much better by email sometimesFriend.
--Sometimes I get so upset I cannot talk Friend.
--You like to talk; I need to send email Friend
--Have you considered the possibility that what I am talking about applies to your day job too Friend.
RantWoman acknowledges that The Still Didn't Get the Memo Committee... could perhaps get things off on better footing by losing references to the "Oops Well" part of the Care and Counsel Committee moniker. RantWoman acknowledges this, but she showed up warts and all and the worship sharing needs to happen regardless.
Plus, RantWoman recently stumbled across the most interesting reference to the word "oversight" not in sense overburdened with the historical weight of enslavement but in a more egalitarian, shared oversight "we all take care of each other" sense. RantWoman WISHES she could remember which blog roll item she saw this in. RantWoman also would not mind some umbra of a penumbra of a sense that anyone else on Care and Counsel committee cares about RantWoman's inquiry. RantWoman is aware of needing to hold someone in theLight about medical matters as well. Finally, if someone calling Dial a Tirade gets a busy signal about this topic, oh well, there are plenty more tirades available. Please hold that point in the Light along with the entire gigantic Still Didn't Get the Memo Committee on Email Immoderation.
The following item appeared recently in the monthly newsletter at RantWoman's Meeting.
CARE AND COUNSELCOMMITTEE
Thoughts on UFM Email
While email is a tremendous benefit to us, at times it can be a burden. Care and Counsel Committee put together the following document to help fellow members. It is common when in the midst of an email problem that we feel the need to help the other person understand our position or make our points more firmly. In these guidelines below, we suggest another tack: Whenever you feel the need to set things right, instead wait calmly. If after due consideration it is still necessary, briefly state your position once and move on.
Too Long: One strategy for long emails is to skim them looking for questions or requests. Limit your response to answering the questions or requests directly and briefly. This will greatly reduce how much must be read and understood, but still gives the other person a specific response. It represents a midpoint between ignoring an email and taking on the burden of reading and responding to an overly long missive.
Too Numerous: If you are receiving too may emails from another member, consider taking a break and filing for future perusal. Once your good feelings return you can limit the amount of mail you read from the other person by setting aside a period of time, say 10 minutes every Monday, to read and respond to their emails. Take the rest and file them for later.
Confusing: If the email is confusing and there are no requests or questions in it, then take whatever understanding you may
have from it and move on. If there are requests or questions in it that you cannot understand, simply respond by letting the
writer know that.
Unkind: A good rule of thumb is to read the first few sentences and ask yourself if you feel good about reading further. If continuing to read is digging a hole of bad feelings, then stop digging and move on. If you want, let the writer know that for you to read the email, he or she will need to rewrite it with kindness.
Writing Email: The other side of reading email is writing email. Kind, compassionate, and thoughtful emails that come quickly to the point and put any requests in the first sentence are the mostly (sic—RantWoman) likely to receive an audience. Put aside longer or heated emails until you have the chance to revise them to a paragraph or two of kind, compassionate, and thoughtful words.
Care and Counsel Committee,
RantWoman, this is God. If the entire Still Didn't Get the Memo committee shows up and everyone talks one blop at a time, this one worship sharing is going to take millenia.
RantWoman , musing: ...could just forward to Care and Counsel one of Rant Brother's "I'ms still mentally ill and I still want firearms" emails, perhaps seasoned with more "I didn't tell you about my day" details than anyone wants to interact with about why it's IMPORTANT that people like RantBrother have places like the Friendly Neighborhood Center for Extreme Computing they can come to read and send email.
