Member-only story
No One Owes You Their Time
And you don’t owe anyone YOUR time either.
Time — it has become something precious to us in an age where everything seems to be competing for our attention every minute of the day.
Back when I was a newbie to the internet, I would get upset if someone didn’t reply back right away to an email or an instant message. I was young — not taking into account that people, even my peers, led busy lives away from the demands of school (and sometimes work). It was so easy to get my feelings all tied up in a knot over the people who didn’t designate their attention to me when I wanted.
In the early 00’s, I was a part of an active message board, and replies would come in sporadic waves. One friend had the demands of soccer practice each day after school, so it was a marvel when he came online before nine o’clock my time. Others had “online curfews” (I was one of them) where they had to get off the computer by a specific time. Our time was not always our own to dole out as we pleased.
Now that I’m grown up — if you can call it that since adulting and I still don’t mix very well — there are times when I let my unanswered emails collect. It’s a form of procrastination, I know, but still it happens. I know the senders may think I’m rude as they wait on replies.
