It's so hard to say goodbye!

To quote the popular Chris Brown song "Say Goodbye"...

There's never a right time to say goodbye
But I gotta make the first move...
There's never a right time to say goodbye
But we know that we gotta go
Our separate ways
And I know it's hard, but I gotta do it,
And it's killing me
Cause there's never a right time,
Right time to say goodbye

I think sometimes it's hard for us to say goodbye to something or someone special to us. To illustrate my point, let's turn to a phenomenon created by our generation--TXTing (text-messaging).

Most TXT conversations have three parts. Let's look at them:

Part I: The beginning

Usually consisting of a greeting, attention-getter, or just a simple sentence or question. CAUTION: Keep the beginning simple and don't get too deep with that first txt! Sometimes the person on the receiving end of the txt can't or doesn't respond right away, so if you put TMI (too much information) in that first txt or you poured your whole soul out in it and don't hear back from them, you might start thinking things like, "OMG, I shouldn't have put that! She thinks I'm stupid!", "He hasn't said anything, yet! He's ignoring me! He hates me!", "I can't believe I sent that; I AM stupid!", etc. You DO NOT want to enter into this state of schizophrenia and you definitely DO NOT want to be the person who actually sends the txt saying, "Are you ignoring me?" or even better, "Um, just ignore that last txt."

Part II: The body

This is the easy part. This is where you talk about all the "important" stuff. If you can carry on a normal conversation, you can't go wrong here!

Part III: The ending

Okay, now this part's possibly the hardest part of learning how to effectively txt and the main reason for me posting this on my blog! The trick is to recognize when the body of the txt conversation is over and to send ONE (1) txt to end the conversation. You can even end it by NOT sending one more txt. For some, there is a built-in txt reflex that makes them feel like they NEED to respond to every single txt sent by the other person. If you fall into this category, I beg you to LET GO! It's fine! Just because they sent you a smiley face DOES NOT mean that you have to respond with one.

One surefire way to recognize the end of the txt conversation is to notice when the other person doesn't send you a question to answer or something to comment on. Another way to notice that the txting should just stop is just that--the other person JUST STOPS txting you. Take a hint, it's over!

Once you've sent a txt to end the conversation, it's over. You aren't allowed to send something after you've already sent a "k ttyl" or "later" or the infamous solitary ":)"

TXTing is hard, I know, but you'll get it! Just stick with it! Oh, and one last thing--just because you type LOL, doesn't mean you have to physically laugh out loud :)

ttyl