Time. Is there ever enough of it? Perhaps there is universality in time, or it could be relative. I leave that to the quantum physicists out there. One great perspective on Time was simply titled "Time" (Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon, Harvest/Capitol, 1973). The lyrics are incredible, and the older I get the more sense they make. Must be a senility thing? Click the link and read the lyrics, seriously.
There are reminders there. They focus us on our demise, the fragility of this existence, and the persistence of time. In some part, that is about knowledge and perspective. Floyd notes that about youth:
"And you are young and life is longAnd there is time to kill today"
And there is reminder that we can all lose track of tasks and assignments:
"Plans that either come to naughtOr half a page of scribbled lines"
Are we keeping up with the day-to-day? Or, are we persistently falling behind? I recently took a flight and they gave me a cocktail napkin that said something like "the best things start on the back of a napkin." Where are your notes? What of your dreams? How will you confront your El Guapo? The Three Amigos (Orion 1986).
In my early days at the OJCC, we were struggling with the challenges of the "new" and revolutionary electronic mail. Keep in mind that was 2001, thirty years after the first email was sent. But remember also that email really came into vogue in the 1990s. We were amused, enthused, and at times abused. Email revolutionized the daily joke, enabled keeping up, and accelerated our world.
Then came all the attendant threats and insults. Email was not the problem, it was a tool. It turned out to be incredibly powerful and yet something we had to become increasingly wary of and careful with. As with many tools, we had to revel in its wonders and yet learn to appreciate its shortcomings and threats.
And email intertwined with time. When we discovered it in the 1990s, we loved its speed and ease. After we each sent our first "d'Oh" email, we also lamented that speed and ease. We soon found ourselves sifting through full inboxes. That speed and ease facilitated us sending requests and missives, but it likewise empowered others to send them to us.
I can remember when 100 emails per day was an expected volume. When that reached 200, it was fortunately inclusive of a great many diversions that could be deleted without much thought. The novelty of the daily joke, the casual inquiry or announcement, passed. Social media soon came to replace those. The inanity remained but on different platforms. First with "bulletin boards" and then with an increasingly complex, intrusive, and untenable spirit and intent.
In 2002, when email was relatively new, the OJCC struggled with judges and others who loved the "reply all" button. Talk about a waste of time. There was a period when the IT department disabled some of our distribution lists because of indiscriminate use for innocuous inquiries each followed by incessant and unnecessary "reply all" responses.
One that sticks in my mind was about an EMA provider. The original "to all" message was essentially whether anyone had heard of a named physician. That started a cascade of "nope" responses and a couple of "wasn't he part of _____?" questions. Of course, those "wasn't he" messages started a new cascade of "nope" and then other questions. In a classic avalanche methodology, inboxes were soon overflowing with everything from the innocuous to the absurd.
I was reminded of the old saw regarding pig wrestling. George Bernard Shaw supposedly said “Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.” If that doesn't encapsulate the breadth of social media, I cannot imagine what would.
Another email exchange that sticks in my mind occurred close to the end of my time on the Pensacola Bench in 2006. I had sent a message to one of the more seasoned judges about an order he wrote. When I did not hear back from him in a few days, I called, discussed, and put it out of my mind. Two years later, I got a message from Outlook that my 2004 email had been "deleted without being read." At first, that hurt, but when I realized it was two years old it occurred to me that perhaps there was a reason he did not reply to that email - perhaps he never replied to any and just dumped the folder every couple or years?
This all came rushing back to the front of my mind when I opened my email On April 12, 2024. I had received an "unlist" email. We get a couple of those everytime we send out an email blast to our users. The blasts are sent no more than monthly and are intended to steer the community to important happenings or challenges in workers' compensation. I was a bit surprised to see an "unlist" though because we last sent out a blast on April 1, 2024.
I looked again, and the header said I sent out a message "Tue. Apr 10," but my mind rejected that. April 10 was Wednesday. I opened the message and in fact I was wrong. April 10 was a Tuesday, in 2018! I am not sure if the sender just opened that 6-year-old email recently and decided to "unlist."
Or, perhaps, the message was opened 6 years ago and the recipient has been contemplating whether to "unlist?" Some live by the motto that "fools rush in." Elvis, Grammercy Records, 1940. Maybe the sender was worried about hurting my feelings? That's a fool's errand, but don't tell anyone.
The points here are varied. First, harkening to the many complaints about professionalism I hear lately, if someone ghosts your email or text, call them. Just because you love texts does not mean that they do. Next, imagine getting 200 emails daily. Think first, is this message that really needs to be sent? If so, must it be a "reply all?" Before you answer see Tonight's Plot (April 2023).
Is it possible one might sit on a message for 6 years and then respond? Certainly. There are all levels and descriptions of technology comfort out there. We are each different, and there will be exceptions to any rule. Is it meaningful when someone deletes your message, ghosts you, or "unlists?" Perhaps, but don't take things so personally.
But, most important, there is just not enough time. Not enough to squander. Not enough to waste. Not enough to excuse our failure to slow it down, to stop and smell the roses, once in a while. I will be pausing this week to attend the Forum at ChampionsGate. In the words of Bob Segar, "See some old friends, good for the soul." Hollywood Nights, Capitol, 1978. I hope I will see you there.
