Zoom is a four letter word

 In 2012, whilst I was studying for my university finals, my Grandmother who lived in Australia had a devastating stroke. The knowledge came in painfully slow drips from afar. The truth was there wasn’t a lot of information yet and what we did know came to me 4^th hand from the other side of the world.

You know that scene in the Tom and Jerry cartoons where Tom is hit in the face with a frying pan and is suddenly stunned out of his chase? It was that. I was Tom. I had that sarcastic orbit of stars haloing my head. On the inside it was like looking at the world through 16 layers if cling film. I could sort of see everything. I could touch nothing. Everything was just a little bit out of grasp.

The feeling of disconnection was acute. My whole life I’d been the kid with the exotic family in all parts of the world. And it was fun. Always somewhere to travel, someone to see, someone to stay. Sunday mornings were reserved for long distance phone calls to Australia. They were hurried and there was a distracting echo of my own voice down the line.

Months after the stroke I moved to Yorkshire. Even in her post stroke fuzz, Grandma was straight on it with ‘do we know any boys for her?’ Grandpa D abruptly reminded her, ‘they’ll all be too old or dead for her, dear’.

The Sunday morning calls became more important than ever. I wanted to know everything. What was she eating? How far could she walk? Have you learnt any new tricks this week, Grandma?

But the conversations were strained, expensive and I came to feel more disconnected than before.

Then came FaceTime. Some genius in the family decided to buy my grandparents an iPad, or as Grandpa D called it ‘The Machine’. He also insisted that all dogs were called Fido or Rover and all cats were called Moggy. We weren’t going to win this one.

And from then on, on Friday evening my time and Saturday morning their time, our weekly FaceTime calls began. Always between Grandpa D’s first and second pieces of toast and always drinking Yorkshire Tea, which he liked to tell unwitting and over-trusting Australians was ‘brewed on the Yorkshire Moors, don’t you know?’

It was like someone plugged us all back into the mains supply again. The cling film between me and them was gone. I had the gift of time, no expensive phone bills, and space, I could see her. I could see my Grandma surfing the living room furniture to speak to me. I could see the new tricks. I could even see the family cat.

For a period of time, video calls changed the relationship I had with my family. We could feel a part of each other’s lives in the most wonderful way.

In a pandemic world we have seen the epoch making impact of Zoom/Teams/Face Time/House Party. It is how we have worked, lived, loved, died and grieved together. There is no doubt that this technology has made the world bearable when it might not have been.

But. It’s just not the same.

As our socially distanced lives become a little more social and a little less distant we are all musing ‘will we keep doing it this way?’ And whilst there are some unique benefits to the online world of work, I would like to expose a discreet and pernicious drawback which we are downplaying enormously.

Zoom is shoulders-up contact. There’s no heart and there are no gut reactions. We simply can’t see them. We are missing the pinball energy of a team literally reverberating with ideas which grow and evolve as they bounce off the arms in the room until spectacularly hitting the jackpot as everyone erupts with ‘Eureka’, lights flicker and flash and the DJ at the cognitive disco in every extravert’s mind has just earned themselves another rave review.

In the online version of this scenario Phil left himself on mute, Rebecca still can’t get her camera to work and the ball comes crashing down. For now, this DJ remains on Furlough.

In our virtual meeting spaces (note, these aren’t always Zoom) we are missing the detail which doesn’t appear in the minutes or action logs. There is something else. There is energy. And that’s the bit I’m good at, that’s the bit I crave and feed off. And when it’s gone something else fills the void; my imposter.

Imposter syndrome is something I have grappled with in the last years with varying success. Recently I’ve noticed a link between online communication and my feeling of disengagement, not good enough, not thriving. It’s counterfeit communication which is making me feel like a counterfeit contributor.

So how do we reconcile the gift of time and space which allowed me to reconnect with my family and the magic of IRL (in real life) alchemy? Maybe the answer is less about adoption of new things and more about the abandonment of old ideas. We used to imagine all sorts of barriers to digital communication and ‘all’ it took was a global health pandemic for us to do away with those quite simply. We are better than we know at adapting and this is what we must keep doing. Adapting. Banana bread came and went, I suspect zoom is here to stay for now, the rest is TBC.