All I Am Saying, Give Chauncey a Chance

It's still cloudy and sprinkly in Seattle, but spring has definitely sprung. I am one of the few people in this city that doesn't care about sun as much as I care about warmth. And the thermometer shows that we are not in danger of any freaking snow any time soon which is all I care about. Rain, I can handle you just fine. I just prefer spring rain to winter rain. Summer rain is even better.


I can't think the words "summer rain" without thinking of that Belinda Carlisle song. That is one of those facts that straddles the line between pathetically sad and unbelievably awesome.


Subject change! (I know. Great writing technique. Dispense with transitions and just yell "subject change!" at will).


I know this dude- well, I sort of know him. He knows who I am, is really the extent of it, but he probably couldn't pick me out of a line up, and to quote Madeline Kahn in Young Frankenstein, the feeling is mooch-ell. We nominally know each other. I'll call him Chauncey. Just because whenever Nordic Boy wants to denote fanciness in a person, he for some reason calls them Chauncey. It is a universal hooty-tooty name, I guess. Chauncey is bonafide fancy, for reals. Lots of fancy degrees, lots of fancy jobs. Like, a lot of jobs, simultaneously, which I sort of don't get. How do these fancy people have so many jobs? Chauncey holds a high post at the UN, and he also teaches regularly at NYU, and Wharton, and some business school in France. Each year, he is doing all these things. He is also a really active trustee on a few foundations and boards that you have heard of, but I don't want to name. He plays classical piano. He engages in polo and other equestrian type things. He's just such a...Chauncey.


Anyway, the fanciness is not even what I want to talk about. I want to talk about the busy-ness. So many things! So many places! I don't get it. And what I don't get, even more than that, is this dude's ability to be responsive. I have cause to email Chauncey maybe once a year or so. It's too complicated to even get into how the hell I even know this person, and plus it's boring. But whenever I email him, you know what? He emails me back WITHIN TEN MINUTES. Granted, his emails back are not wordy, but they are pleasant, and do not sound rushed, and always warm and personal. At first I thought maybe it was his people- like he had a secretary or something that was emailing me back for him, but nope. I can tell from the content of the email that it's really him.


This morning I emailed him and then closed out my email and started doing something else, but a couple of minutes went by and I started to feel like I had to get back in there to see if he did it again. And he did! By the time I logged back in he had already gotten back to me.


I hate to say this, but I live in a world where you email someone and you're lucky to hear back from them in a couple of weeks, let alone a couple of days. I am not saying we all need to be like Chauncey (who I suspect has a Blackberry grafted directly onto his hand), but I think we can all do a bit better with responding to people, don't you? I think I am above average on this front, but I flake out sometimes. I know I do. And I feel like it's not out of the ordinary for some folks to straight up make a habit of forgetting to ever get back to people. Or leaving their friends hanging but always having a breezy apology weeks later. As a matter of fact I just witnessed some straight up bullshiz on that front last week, albeit it was secondhand and not directed at me so technically none of my business but I was still silently offended on behalf of the person I saw it happening to. It was some serious flakage happening, people. Frosted flakage.


Anyway, Chauncey just made me think. If someone talks to you in person, you talk back to them. You don't ignore them for a month and then say oh hey girl, sorry about that, what did you say again? It should be the same with the technologies too, right? At least for the majority of the time, yes? Why do I feel like I am saying something too radical, and I need to tone it down?


At any rate, Chauncey blows my mind on this on an annual basis. Maybe the trick is to only talk to each person you know once a year.


Aw, I don't know. Let's just watch this Belinda Carlisle video and ponder this together.