One morning when I thought I was on top of everything, a friend emailed me to ask, “Didn’t you get my Voxer message?”

Lately I am having trouble communicating. Every device I have seems to be ringing or beeping or pinging on an increasing number of platforms.

My son who works abroad uses WhatsApp. Some of my friends regularly connect with me via Facetime.

Friends and colleagues send me voice messages or reach me walkie-talkie style using Voxer (an app designed for teams).

I have four email boxes.

Some of my grad students don’t really like email and connect with me only in our course shell. Some prefer to text me.

When my landline rings, it’s either a solicitation or one of a handful of older relatives.

I get pings for web chats on both Skype and Hangouts (there increasingly, from annoying strange men.)

And friends remind me of the messages I missed on Facebook.

I’m the first one to celebrate the range of options we now have to communicate, but it’s becoming increasingly hard to figure out what’s ringing.

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