The initial flood of friends and family checking in from home has thinned to our very closest circle and I completely get it. Life goes on. At home, I would see people more than I would email or call them so without that element here, it is easy to slide off the radar. Understood.
But I am really having to jig how I communicate with my favorite people because of the epic distance and time difference. Here is what I am learning about myself and about being a good keep in touch-er:
FaceTime
I have learned that I don’t love FaceTime – I have also never liked talking on the phone so this makes me the worst possible candidate to live abroad. I think it is because if I am not WITH people, I like to be doing a bunch of different things at once. You can’t with FaceTime – it is an in the moment sort of thing. Forces me to slow right down. And I know what it means to my mum to see my eyes – to help her gauge how I am REALLY doing in this completely new place – so it is what it is.
I am just finding that on a day that I choose to FaceTime, I end up doing a few in a row which means I am repeating the same stories over and over again. I feel like a broken record and quite frankly, can’t keep who I have already told a story to straight. I need to get in the habit of scheduling calls separately – breaking it up.
Email Makes the World a Little Place
I love going through email after I have sent the kids off to school and I am very recently getting in the habit of responding right away. At first, I would want to write lengthy notes on every detail of our lives here so would save the emails in a folder to respond when I had time to provide the full monty of our experience. Some of those emails went unresponded for days, sometimes a week. Best to send something right away so friends and family know it has been received and if time allows, sit down and write the novel later.
Post-It
I am obsessed with Instagram. It is such an easy way to provide a quick look into our lives here and regular updates on the girls. I overshare probably but have decided to be really picky about who I accept to follow me – keep that little circle small and tight. Love it.