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Don’t Make Me Pick Up That Phone

An introvert’s lament

Shannon Page
6 min readMay 15, 2019
Photo by Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash

I am dealing with a contract situation that is just refusing to be worked out over email and snail mail. It’s just…I can’t even…it’s been dragging on for ages and ages, and the only thing left to resolve is so simple, but we’re Just. Not. Getting. There.

The latest iteration came through this week, and it was still not right. I duly sent an email, explaining yet again, very clearly, what needs doing.

No response.

I swear to god, I was almost about to get ready to start thinking really really seriously about picking up the phone and calling the party of the other part. I thought about it so hard, while I was out doing errands. Like, I was totally going to do it. When I got back home, I thought about it even more, very earnestly, delaying and second-guessing myself. Soon, it was nearly five o’clock in New York.

Fortunately, I then realized I could run over here and write an article about how much I hate making phone calls. That would push the problem long past East Coast quitting time.

That’s great, but…why can’t I just make that call?

It didn’t used to be like this. When I was in high school, I loved talking on the phone. I could talk to friends for hours, and at least once I did the classic teen…

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Shannon Page
Shannon Page

Written by Shannon Page

Writer, editor, thinker of things, living on Orcas Island, Washington state. https://www.shannonpage.net

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