Today is day 1 back to work. It’s been a bit slow and to be honest–it’s really not the hardest job in the world. It is simple and easy and being nice to people is something I have always been good at. Well, at least when it comes to things like me providing service. One thing I have been able to recognize about my own patience levels, I guess? Sometimes I am an angry email writer and an angry caller. If something terrible happens to me or my money, that is usually when I am raising hell. If I have purchased a service that goes wonky or is less than I paid, for, you better believe I am calling.

But this job is easy and takes really nothing to do–once you know and understand systems, it’s just a matter of applying that information and what you are picking up along the way. I am great at live problem solving for customers and have a knack for making shit a one call resolution matter. It’s not that I don’t want people calling–in fact I tell people all the time to call. But calling a few times on an issue where we usually have the tools to solve it, USUALLY, well forget it. That is what I do best- I make people happy and I am kind of a disgustingly nice person on the phone. At the beginning when I was working from home and Don was not, he would listen to me and I think he was like WHO IS this girl? Because I am just as salty and say stuff sometimes in situations that people consider inappropriate. Because I speak my mind even still. That part of New York is still inside me, though parts of me I realize have been worn away over the years with the limited contact I seem to make in terms of new relationships. The redundancy is really an effect of the affect of what is largely a non-networking population.

But I did realize another thing yesterday as I was sitting in the waiting room of the cardiac ward–every single person was on a device or phone, save two. And those two looked not so great in terms of health of person–they were some of the worst looking in there. But every other person and family–each member was glued to their phones. Oh and of course not me. I was looking around incredulously in every direction–there were 30 people in there glued. I read something the other day that LinkedIn and Facebook are full of people having affairs, with the average being 4 online relationships. So I wonder…did something fucking happen over the past few years while I wasn’t looking? Do you guys in the city still network everywhere you can or at least with some mild frequency? My biggest issue is I haven’t met anyone who inspired me to want to do more in years. Nobody who makes me really want to elevate my game save a few artists…but as a general rule I am not making the connections I seemed to even make at least weekly in a city world. It is like I am oscillating in this world where I am totally fucking invisible.

And I question–has it changed? I mean, I am sure none of you fuckers will write a thing. I swear there is a sweeter version of me not going to be calling you fuckers getting prepped in another extension–BUT–do people not try to network or is the indication of a LinkedIn and Facebook connection a signal we are no longer doing in person what we used to? That online platforms really have largely permeated all social realms and the organic world is going to be hard to capture?

Because you know what? That sucks.