Friday, February 04, 2005
Phew! Today's really what I call a "catching-up" day. In a short span of a morning, I've chatted with 3-1/2 persons on MSN (the "1/2" comes in because I caught him at a wrong time and had to end the chat prematurely). Usually I'll reserve IM conversations to purely a passive tool, meaning I won't take the initative to keep in contact with people through IM. I'll rather wait for people to contact me rather than making the first step in starting a conversation online.
I decide to take a step of change and decide to take the risk in starting online conversations. Most of the time I'm passive because, as the 1/2-person* has demonstrated, I don't know how ready or prepared the other party is in sustaining a conversation with me. He/she may be occupied doing something, and the last thing I want is to disrupt his/her concentration. Using online conversations to communication can also lead to misunderstandings if one is not careful.
However, being able to take responsibility of my feelings do help. Using IMs can be emotionally harzardous because you do not know what the other party really feels--according to a study, words only make up 7% of the message in a conversation (tones and pitch makes up 38% and non-verbal body language makes up 55%). So, if my intentions are carefully crafted in my online conversations and I know I've done it to the best of my abilities, then I have protected myself emotionally--even if the other party accuses otherwise.
*I'm not saying that the "1/2" person is less than a whole person (he in every way is as whole as any other person), it's just that I find it easier to reference that particular incident through the notation. No offence, I hope...
I decide to take a step of change and decide to take the risk in starting online conversations. Most of the time I'm passive because, as the 1/2-person* has demonstrated, I don't know how ready or prepared the other party is in sustaining a conversation with me. He/she may be occupied doing something, and the last thing I want is to disrupt his/her concentration. Using online conversations to communication can also lead to misunderstandings if one is not careful.
However, being able to take responsibility of my feelings do help. Using IMs can be emotionally harzardous because you do not know what the other party really feels--according to a study, words only make up 7% of the message in a conversation (tones and pitch makes up 38% and non-verbal body language makes up 55%). So, if my intentions are carefully crafted in my online conversations and I know I've done it to the best of my abilities, then I have protected myself emotionally--even if the other party accuses otherwise.
*I'm not saying that the "1/2" person is less than a whole person (he in every way is as whole as any other person), it's just that I find it easier to reference that particular incident through the notation. No offence, I hope...
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