Flying the Coop

Another chapter, a new adventure…

Why I find Messenger to be a pain.

This post brought to you in part by Starbucks. Free WiFi and not-free snacks available now at Starbuckses everywhere!

For the past few weeks I’ve been mostly avoiding Facebook Messenger on my phone. I realize that I already do that fairly often without meaning to, but this time is slightly different. It started out as a passive non-decision–That is, I just ignored new messages when they arrived and told myself that I’d respond later or something. You know, the normal kinda thing that I do when I’m just not feeling socially able to deal with it right away.

After a little while I decided to make a conscious choice to stop responding to messages. Unless somebody needed an immediate response for something important, I would just ignore the messages. This made it an active choice that I made. Instead of simply neglecting to check messages or open notifications, I was actively ignoring people by choice.

Side note: I’m just spewing things as they come to mind… so this post may not make sense totally.

Now, if I’m ignoring Messenger intentionally vs unintentionally, does that make a difference? Like, should I feel bad about ignoring people that are wanting to talk to me? I think that it depends, but largely I shouldn’t feel bad about it.

See, the reason that I wanted to actively choose to ignore messages is so I wouldn’t feel obligated to respond. Does that make any sense? Maybe not. But for me, knowing that I don’t have to respond to messages helps take the pressure off.

Everyone and everything is trying to get our attention these days, and it’s quite invasive because we each have a phone with us pretty much all day long. I have my phone with me a lot, and with it I carry a slight sense of obligation that society sort of attaches to modern life. We need to be available, connected, and totally up-to-date on everything. God forbid that we aren’t informed about the latest happenings or newest trends. Everyone needs to throw in their two cents and react.

Where was I going with this… Ugh. I need to gather my thoughts again.

I think my point was that Messenger comes with a sense of obligation. By consciously choosing to ignore Messenger, I kinda remove that feeling for myself. I’m no free to respond or not respond as I wish! Sure, nothing’s actually changed except my perspective…but it makes a difference. By choosing to ignore Messenger and remove the obligation, I’ve actually been able to engage with some of my long-distance friends more than I used to. I don’t know why it’s made such a big difference. Maybe I’m just crazy.

I’ll come back and finish this post later.


Okay! It’s later. The next day, in fact. I had to leave the Starbucks so I could have TV night and now I don’t remember where my thought process was for this post. I’ll try to get back there somehow.

I think that I was just meaning that there are pressures and expectations put on us these days that we don’t even realize exist. Small little things like responding to messages become a big stress and it’s not even because of what those messages are saying but simply just the fact that we have to deal with them–are expected to deal with them. It’s one more thing on the big pile of responsibilities we have.

Whether we mean to or not, we take on that stress and let it build up. Maybe we don’t all have the same problem with messages as I do, but I’m sure there’s a bunch of little things that causes certain people similar feelings.

So that’s basically it. I’ve given myself permission to ignore messages and leave responses until a later time. Sure, part of the problem may be that I tend to have conversations over text more than quick communications about a certain topic. Either way, I needed to write a post about something and this is what came out. Hope it was worth the read. ;P

M3


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Comments

2 Responses to “Why I find Messenger to be a pain.”

  1. Awkward Potato Avatar
    Awkward Potato

    Nah it’s a thing. I sometimes avoid getting on Messenger altogether just because I don’t want to open up a potential conversation (that’s what usually happens to me as well). Even if that’s not the case, I still just ignore them sometimes. I’m glad you’ve made a decision that gives you more peace of mind 🙂

    1. Matthew Avatar

      Thanks, AP! 🙂 Another thing that I didn’t really touch on is that opening Messenger can remind me of things that I don’t want to think at that time. It’s why I try to use different means of communication for different things I do, such as work. That way I don’t feel like work is always in front of me–that’s tiring!

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