Happy Monday ,
There's a name in your contacts you keep scrolling past.
An old client. Someone who used to send you work. A person you had one good call with and then nothing.
You're not really avoiding them naman. Not exactly. It just feels like too much time has passed, and now a message would be weird.
Topic natin sya kasi Lei wrote in about exactly this — months of silence with old clients whenever what they needed didn't line up with what she was running (which are events). Mas malaki pa nga yun kasi it's not a detail she was doing badly, it's a thing that stopped happening at all.
And it's not laziness. We all have a list of people we mean to message.
It's that we think the silence means something to them.
James Clear (Atomic Habits author) wrote a line that explains it better than I can:
"When I notice myself worrying about 'what other people will think,' I find I'm usually not worried about any single person's opinion. If I pick a specific person, I'm rarely concerned about what they will think. What I fear is the collective opinion in my head. It's imaginary."
This is what I'm reminded of whenever I'm stalling.
Now, try that on the person you've gone quiet on.
Picture their actual face. Do you really think they've been sitting there counting the months, getting annoyed?
No. They've been busy. They've got their own mess going on.
NOBODY IS KEEPING SCORE OF YOUR SILENCE EXCEPT YOU.
The awkwardness is real. It just only exists on your side of the message.
Okay, practical. What do you actually write?
The instinct is to apologize for the gap. "Hi, sorry it's been so long, I know it's been a while..."
Don't.
That makes the gap the subjct of the message. Now they have to respond to your guilt instead of to you.
Open with something new instead. Something specific and current about them — something they posted, launched, hired for, celebrated.
No apology. No "just checking in." Just a reason to talk today.
I'll admit may bias ako dito. My own heel strike is writing opening lines to strangers — hundreds of them per campaing, and I split test which ones actually get opened.
The ones that work never start with an apology. They start with the other person.
Same rule applies to someone you already know. Mas madali nga, kasi kilala mo na sila.
So ikaw , sino yung taong matagal mo nang hindi na-memessage?
You don't even have to send it today. Just reply and tell me who came to mind. Minsan nakakatulong na masabi lang.
Cheers,
Shoden "Imaginary Mean Crowd" San
P.S. Kung may pumasok agad na pangalan habang binabasa mo to — yun na yun. Wag mo nang i-second guess.
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