Kirkepiscatoid

Ok, I'm coming in from the cold to some degree.

Many of you know I was mostly AWOL this week. I did manage to schedule my reflections and have them post automatically.

Well, actually, I was here. I decided to take a personal retreat for four days. I wanted to see what happened in a world where life basically revolved around liturgy and meals and everything else was secondary, in an attempt to identify in my 49th year, the beginnings of my "Jubilee year" what are the debts that need cancelling in my spirit, and the slaves I need to free. I will be blogging a lot more about this experience as my thoughts process and evolve. Today, I am just adjusting to my world again, feeling grounded in a new way.

I had a sense what the big one was already, but this trip affirmed this.

The world of "instant availability" has the potential to blow me to bits. It is the root of 90% of my angry moments.

I thought about how "call" has evolved since when I first started being on call 20 years ago.

Twenty years ago, we all had voice beepers and no cell phones. When you were on call, you could easily miss your page or it was garbled. It was not a big deal if you took 20 or 30 minutes to call back; people knew you might be out looking for a pay phone. People did the best they could until you responded. They would wait 20 minutes before calling you again, if they wondered if the message was garbled. You stayed home more on weekends on call because of this, maybe only ventured out to the grocery store or church, because you knew you needed to be mostly home. People often called your house first BEFORE they paged you. People were more mindful of "bothering you at home" with less important things or would say on the page, "call at your convenience."

Then came digital pagers. The need to repeat pages lessened. But people sort of stopped calling you at home first. You didn't have to scramble to write down a phone number, the pager saved it. But you still might have to scrounge for a pay phone, and people were still fairly ok with time lags. But there was no system, really to distinguish "call me now" vs. "call me at your convenience." Sometimes people might enter "911" after the number, as a code for "call me back right now," but we really did not have a code for "take your time, don't rush." Also, with the voice pagers, you knew WHO it was before you responded, and could take things in consideration like "what that person usually gets worried about." With only a number, you didn't know who it was, just sometimes WHERE it was, so you were less prepared for what this call might bring.

Next came cell phones. The first thing that happened was those of us who were resistive to cell phones kind of got pushed into them. I had resisted because, frankly, coverage still was not all that good. But when word got out that "Dr. So-and-so always answered right away, and YOU drag your feet," it was no longer acceptable that you were trying to find a place to call or a place where the cell phone actually worked, it was that YOU were "irresponsible" and Dr. So-and-So was "more responsible than you." Something was wrong with YOU. Everyone suddenly was expected to answer within 5 minutes, and no one seemed to care if their problem was URGENT or just administrative. People were still using the pagers, b/c incoming calls cost money too, and there weren't package deals yet. So at least they weren't calling the cell phone directly and wasting your money.

The other thing that emerged in the "pager/cell phone" era was those of us on call started venturing out from home more, and doing more things outside of the home...which meant we were interrupted more, and we became ANGRY more that we were being interrupted. Those calling became ANGRY more that we didn't answer fast enough.

We are morphing to a world now where at some point, we will ditch the pagers, but not just yet. People still "in-house" at the hospital still need pagers, because in some patient care areas cell phone use is not permitted. But it has created a paradox for those of us who take call outside of the hospital. Some people page you and some call your cell phone, and sometimes when they call your cell phone, they don't leave a message, and because of HiPPA, the hospital phone numbers come up as "Restricted" so you don't know WHO to call back...lots of weird new quirks set up to make more people angry you didn't respond in the appropriate time frame. Also, the pager systems are starting to be more in disarray as fewer people have pagers, and the coverage isn't as good, and the pages don't go through like they used to. Well...just more reasons for those calling me to be angry, and for me to be angry.

I am starting to see how this potential for anger is encroaching into the rest of our world. This year's 2nd year class is the first one that has been visibly upset that I do not check my school e-mail on weekends. I do not believe it is my duty as their instructor to be "on call" for questions about the exam on Monday at 10 p.m. on Sunday. I had one student in the past vehemently line ME out that he pays x amount of tuition and he EXPECTS me to be available for HIS questions because HE PAID FOR IT. He did not care for my response that I was not a happy meal at McDonalds, cooked to his specifications the same way every time. I said, "I hate to tell you this, but piss-poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part." He complained to one of the deanlets. Thanks be to God the deanlet just laughed. But I knew had he complained to the right person, I could just as easily have been lectured on "my duty to be responsive to student needs," and it would have ended the way these conversations usually end between us, with my telling him to go to Hell and to hire someone else if I don't suit the mission of the institution.

I am realizing in this word of text messaging and Facebook and Twitter that these things, which in some ways are a godsend, also have the potential to make me fall prey to everyone's expectations. We have all become less mindful of interrupting other people, trusting others to "just put us on voice mail if they don't have time for us." But we forget maybe THOSE people also might suffer from the pressure of "expectations" and answer instead of putting us on voice mail, and then they are annoyed they are interrupted. I know there are certain people in my life I rarely put on voice mail; some are because it might be work related, but honestly, some are because if I put them on voice mail, they will call me again and chew me out for putting me on voice mail! Others get their feelings hurt b/c they see my putting them on voice mail as "I don't want to deal with them, I am dissing them." So instead of being honest with myself and my needs, I answer them, and then get mad that they called about BS. I also know some of my friends have had their moments with me.

This world of "expectations of instant response" has created a lot of insecurity-based anger. People's neuroses and our own neuroses really come out in spades. I recognize it is 90% of my own angry outbursts.

But the biggest, hugest thing I had affirmed on this retreat is that my insistence of my own "quiet times" is to be guarded and enforced except in case of emergency. I'm going to be frank. My "bullshit tolerance level" is way smaller than most, and what constitutes "bullshit" in my world is much larger than most. Despite my gregarious nature in public, I can only be in that mode for a short time, and when I've hit my limit, I break down very quickly. I have sensed for years that the thing to do is just leave. My friends joke about my party skills. I stay a little, am the life of the party, and the next thing you know, everyone goes, "Where'd Kirk go?" I had left, disappeared, sometimes without so much as a goodbye, and sometimes with just a quick, "gotta go, tnxbye." This really offends some people until they understand. Some never understand.

This is why Facebook, when used properly for my world in the way that is healthy for me, is a godsend. (Now, Facebook chat, I can mostly do without. Too much instant expectation.) But I am grateful to God that Facebook gives me the outlet to be social without the physical and temporal pressures of it. I just have to discipline myself not to use it as a time suck for empty space, but rather a positive means of communicating with old and new friends.

But I am realizing that I need regular, stable quiet time like some people need air, and I've been living like someone with emphysema in that regard. I can live more fully and be more forgiving and less angry about the pressures of my job when I have time for just being quiet, praying, and recharging. Facebook allows me to be social in a community in a way that does not pressure my physical need for "alone time." I'm sure there is some expert out there who will say this makes me a reclusive nerd or some psychopathology is at work, but my short answer is, "No, the more quiet time I get, the more I feel alive when I DO interact with others."

There are little glimpses my body has given me (none serious, but some enough to rule out some serious and scary medical issues) that as I age, I can no longer "do everything." I have chosen to listen to my body in this regard. I find I can do what I choose to do more freely and boldly when I have ample recharging time. This is a very liberating thought, and to journey to a place where I feel less shackled by the unhealthy expectations of others is relieving. We will always labor under expectations of others, but I am realizing so many are "unhealthy" and so few are "healthy." Maybe some of this is none of us feel free to admit what it is we really need, me included. I know in my case, I tend to prefer to be silent when what I want to say is "No," and my silence too often is read as tacit approval.

The Catechism in the BCP (p. 848) says one of our duties to others is "to speak the truth, and not to mislead others by our silence." We all have a habit of either silence or the unfeeling "yeah, sure" to some degree when we mean "no." I have definitely been this way about my need for solitude, because I sense my need is off the bell shaped curve compared to most others (it has the potential to appear "weird"), and I don't think people see this need as "authentic" in me because I'm just so damned gregarious and windy and comical when I'm "on." But it is real, and this trip has affirmed my need to understand this need more in myself.