I mentioned on twitter yesterday evening that I was going spend some of my public holiday today going through my contact list on my phone and undertake a cull. I was scrolling through said list the other day urgently looking for a number (yes I know there is a search functionality in almost phone contact lists but I was scrolling nonetheless) and was surprised at just how many contacts I seemed to have in my phone. Now this is not an attempt by me to say “look at me, I am so cool that I have too many contacts”, indeed because I feel entirely the opposite about myself (which I am entirely happy with by the way), rather it inspired me to actually go through my contact list and remove contacts that are were either outdated, people I actually did not know OR people I know I will never wish to contact again.

My starting point was to look at my calls list and my text messages as well as the Whatsapp app on my phone to determine who had actually been in contact with me or with whom I had initiated contact. That review showed me that of the, somewhere between, 600 and 800 contacts that were in my phone / outlook I have only actually been in regular contact over the 6 weeks (since my phone was replaced) with, optimistically, 25 people. Take out work colleagues and clients and that number shortened to 8 people including my parents and sister. As I do a lot of my “contacting” on social media through twitter that was not an entirely unexpected result but equally it indicated to me that doing a cull now was entirely a good thing.

So I next set about looking at each contact in my address book and deleting them. Some such deleting was easy: I couldn’t remember who the person was let alone how they ended up in my address book in the first place OR they were people who, given events of the past, I will never ever deign to be in contact with again. Other contacts that I was looking took me some time to decide whether to delete or not. Now why is this so? I had not been in contact with some of these people for over a year yet I was torn as to whether to delete their name from my phone address? It struck me during the course of this internal debate raging in my head between deleting and not deleting that what I was doing this morning, in some cases, was the final act to end a friendship or an acquaintance and that I was, in some cases, finding that act very difficult.

Now, I am not that into myself to think that all of these people that I took time to consider whether or not I was “ending the friendship” have spent the last 12 months or more just waiting by the phone just for my call or text. I have no doubt the bulk of people that I actually knew in my address book that I deleted had written off our friendship or acquaintance some time ago. Which, of course, is entirely OK: friendships wane and, to quote a very wise man whose name escapes me, “shit happens”. Indeed, it was somewhat cathartic to press the delete button on some contacts that pushed to the forefront of my mind some fairly rough memories.

There were other contacts in my address book though that I really wrestled with some emotions on just the act the deleting. Some good memories filled my mind about my interactions with those people and I was left to ponder one of the age old questions that people ask themselves and their friends from time to time: why, or more to the point when, did we stop talking? Having had those thoughts I was left with a metaphorical fork in the road: to delete the contact or to keep the contact and actually contact them. In three cases I was pretty sure of the answer to the “why” question and that reason lead me to still hit the delete button. In four other cases I was clueless as to the answer to that same question whilst also genuinely interested in finding out what the person I was reminiscing about was up to, if only to confirm that it was the right time to delete the contact from my phone but also to try and rekindle contact.

10 years ago I would have dialled their numbers and reached out which, for someone like me, would have about as nerve wracking experience as I can imagine. Instead I chose text message as my media of choice to reach out to them. It is here that we get the surprising outcome that I allude to in the title to this post. I have yet to have a response from 2 of the text messages I sent and 1 other message came back with a “think you have the wrong number mate”. The final contact I decided to recontact replied almost immediately and we have since had phone discussion that traversed what has happened in our families, celebrating the recent birth of his second child, lamenting the form of the Australian cricket team and some friendly jousting about the relative strengths of our NRL teams (he is inexplicably still a South Sydney Rabbitohs fan). Toward the end of the conversation I broached the topic of why / when we had stopped talking, admittedly with some trepidation, and, as always seem to be the case when I am most trepidatious, the answer was a simple one to do with life just getting busy and a change in address.

Having had some time to reflect since the culling and the phone conversation of which I speak above, my immediate emotion was happiness that I had undertaken the cull and reconnected with one person. There is also some regret mixed in there though that some of the people who had been my friend in the past I could not bring myself to contact. Nonetheless I am glad I took some time out to tidy up one of the electronic aspects of my life. Similarly inspired I turned my attention to my email inboxes and have gotten my work one down to 16 emails which is a personal record but that is another story.

I leave you with a challenge: have a look at your address book of your phone and if there is someone (or multiple people) in there that you are left with both positive memories and the question of why you stopped talking to them take, to steal from Robert Frost, the road less travelled and reach out. You may be surprised by the outcome!