Why am I so bad at replying to texts?

A personal reckoning, 10 years overdue.

Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.

To all the people I’ve owed texts to before. —Kate

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I’m not a hardcore New Years resolution-er. My goals are always open-ended, and I usually never write them down, so by the end of each year I have no idea if I actually accomplished any of the things I set out to do. But there’s one resolution I always know I’ve failed at, because I’ve set it every January 1st for the past 10 years: getting better at responding to texts. 

“I’m going to get better at responding to texts” is my “the diet starts tomorrow.” It’s a piece of self-improvement that hangs over my every living moment, because there is not a minute in my life when I don’t owe someone, somewhere, some kind of response. Right now, three people are waiting for me to give them answers to a question, let them know when I’m free, or otherwise acknowledge that they have said something to me. These are all people I like, and the conversations are not difficult or scary. I’m just, as I repeatedly explain in an excuse that becomes less endearing the more you hear it, the worst.