Thursday, April 18, 2013

growing up

There are some pretty tangible barometers of maturity, I guess -- when you can legally drink at 21, when you realize you actually like the taste of coffee and aren't just forcing yourself to drink it to try and look "intellectual," etc. But, for me, one of the clearest signs that I have evolved into a semi-functional adult human occurred yesterday in the realm of gmail. 

I've been trying to find a particular designer for a project I'm working on, and a friend of mine sent me a list of five recommendations. I drafted my introductory e-mail (Oh, another sign of maturity! In the past, I would have bitched about the new gmail "compose" layout for weeks, probably would have written a whole blog post about it.... but, in this bright new present, I just immediately switched it back to "old compose" and am now pretending I'll be able to keep it this way forever. VERY adult!). Anyway, I then copied my note into four new e-mails, changing the first names, and sent them out one by one. Once I was finished, I instinctively clicked on my "Sent Mail" folder just to make sure all looked kosher... only to find I had accidentally sent one of the e-mails without changing the first name. I had written "Hi Allison!" to a Maggie.

Now, a previous version of Josh would have completely lost it here. He would have started sweating around the neck, drafted an over-the-top, horrible follow-up e-mail to Maggie ("Guess the cat's out of the bag - you've got some competition. You better hurry to respond quicker than Allison! JK hahaha" or "Sorry, a Maggie really did a number on me when I was a child and the name switch is a defense technique I learned from my therapist :D :P"). Then I would have sent it, clicked "Undo Send" two seconds later, and then ultimately decided to hit "send" again, only to then spend the subsequent half-hour stewing that I had made the situation so much worse. BUT YESTERDAY, after I noted my error, I just kind of calmly smiled (I didn't actually smile, I was sitting by myself in my apartment) and clicked out of the e-mail. "Maybe she'll get a kick out of it," I thought. And then I got up to procure some pistachios to munch on. (KIDDING ABOUT THAT LAST PART. WILL NEVER BE SO ADULT THAT I CASUALLY MUNCH ON PISTACHIOS.) 

This morning I received a response from Maggie. "Hey Brian," the e-mail began.