I recently received a very sweet message sent through the contact form from an anonymous reader who just wanted to thank me for writing and keeping a blog :’) I have no means of reaching her, so I’ll do it here:
Thank you, R.
I’m really very touched by the gesture, more than I can say. Even though you may think “Huh? Email only what. What’s there to be touched about?”
The very fact that someone recognizes my effort and appreciate it enough to take the time to write a message to me – and purely a message, with no hidden agenda – means a lot to me.
Sure, I often receive emails from readers. But 99% of the time it’s because they want something from me -_- Where to buy this. What to do there. When to. How to. Blablabla. I’m not a travel agency, neither is my middle name Google! But ok, I’m usually nice and help them out. I reply even if I don’t know the answer. When I’m feeling particularly generous, I might even search the answer for them, which is something they should have done on their own in the first place wth.
However, I’m getting more annoyed by how self-entitled some of these people are that they cannot be assed to find the answer on their own. If I can get the answer by googling (or worse, the answer is already on my blog!), what’s stopping them? They might be gleefully thinking “Why do the dirty work when the answer can be delivered to me just by asking?”
And… pet peeve, but if you don’t even have the basic courtesy to address me by name (or spell it wrong – it’s only 3 letters for god’s sake) then don’t hold high expectations of me replying your 548201 questions.
So I have decided… From now on, I will stop wasting emotional energy and time on such people. Why do I have to be nice to people who don’t deserve it? Why do I have to feel guilty if I don’t reply to their email (because of earlier-stated annoyances)? I OWE THEM NOTHING. That doesn’t mean I’ll forevermore not answer questions la. I will simply mirror your attitude. How nice I am depends on you. My niceness is earned, not given.
Excuse me for being a bit bipolar in this post, but I just had to get it out of my system. Now that I’ve done it, it’s actually quite a liberating feeling.
And yes, I know I recently talked about a similar issue. I guess my tolerance is rapidly decreasing; not that I had a lot of it to start with. But I’m done now! :D
