THIS FUTURE SUCKS

Years ago, I was in contact with a custom knifemaker named Ru Titley, trying to purchase a stack of cyflect markers he was selling. This was long enough ago and this guy’s operation is small enough that the only way to order was to find the email address somewhere on his Tumblr and start a convo. I reach out, get a reply and then, being Jed, take a full month to get back to him again. When I eventually do I apologise for going silent on him. “That’s okay,” Ru replies, “all lines go dark sometimes.”

Years later, but years ago nonetheless, when Abi and I first met, we started swapping writing, firing drafts back and forth for edits and feedback. There was a point when it was near daily, but that’s hard to sustain. Abi broke the streak (shame upon her) and took 3 weeks to get back to me with a new chapter. She apologised; I told her not to. All lines go dark sometimes. She’s passed the line on, since. 

I fucking hate the pressure to immediately respond, to maintain constantly chugging banter with someone, the supposed need to carve a hot rut in their neurons so that their wheels of thought constantly run my way. Even if I’m trapped in the room with some creep, I watch their attention drift off in the time it takes me to work out what the fuck they just asked me, let alone how to reply, but on the ‘net? Frankly, I’ve got shit to do.

If you want to develop good ideas, have a conversation made up of genuine questions and considered responses, the kind that might take a week or two to really flesh out. Your best friends are the ones you only see a few times each year but when you do, it’s like no time has passed at all. Any part of the internet that demands your attention and response right fucking now had better be in the business of saving lives because otherwise, it’s trying to bamboozle you and push a response that you wouldn’t make if you were thinking clearly. 

So yeah, never apologise for a period of absence, or a break in the noise. All lines go dark sometimes.