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The telephone is not my friend. I'll (almost) never make a phone call if I can find a way to avoid it. If I can send a fax or an email, I will. If I can get someone else to make the call for me, that's the one time I'm not shy about asking for a favor. All of my family and friends know this about me. People either deal with me on those terms, or they don't.
Getting a phone call is a slightly different proposition. I don't hate talking on the phone, just making the call, so when it rings I answer as cheerfully as possible. I've been told I'm good on the phone, and I try to foster that reputation (although I'm not sure I believe it).
For the last two or three months, I've hardly had a day that wasn't peppered with phone calls, to the point that I never expected to get anything done. I would even hesitate to begin a task because I knew I wouldn't get through it without endless interruptions. Nothing much was getting done around here, and I was falling further and further behind. Never my friend, the telephone was becoming my enemy.
It's been a little different this week, and I'm (a) grateful and (2) much more relaxed. Somehow the spatter of incoming calls has died down, and I've been staying on task much better. It's actually pretty satisfying to keep working on a spreadsheet, as I was able to do today, until it's done the way I want it. I think that's what I signed up for when I took this job, 118 years ago.
Today was great! Every time the phone rang, it was someone I truly wanted to talk to. My nephew called, my niece called, my best friend called, and another good friend called. (And that pretty much exhausts my supply of friends, but that's another story altogether.) I had to call Mom because I was on the phone while she was trying to call me. | 
