Do My Newfound Boundaries Apply to My Voicemail Greeting?

3:54 am. I spring awake trying to recall how my voice mailbox greeting goes. How many years have passed since I last recorded a voice mailbox message? Does my voice even sound the same? Why am I ruminating on this now? 

Maybe it has to do with an underlying question that continues to plague me well into my late twenties, no matter how many mantras I scrawl across the bathroom mirror. What do people think about me? In general and when they get my pre recorded voice at the end of the line, stating my name, welcoming them to a new, intangible place they have yet to discover, imploring them to leave me a little note so I can get back to them ASAP?

Upon graduating college, I had a catchy, playful jingle sung to the tune of the Adam’s Family theme song, which my parents suggested was less than professional. I switched to an adult version and never looked back, but surely now my grown-up recording could use a revamp.

As I was writing and rewriting the greeting in my head, hoping to fall back asleep by using this alternative sheep counting tactic, I realized that everything one normally says in a voicemail greeting is an outright lie. And, according to many a self-help book lining the intangible shelves of Audible, lying is a fast track to chakra misalignment and gastrointestinal issues. 

In one of these “self-help” books, the reader is instructed to establish personal boundaries and hold the line, come hell, high-water, or a voicemail message begging for a rewrite. The author proposes that it’s better to feel guilty than resentful when building your brand new, Great-Wall-of-China-size boundaries. But do my fresh lines-in-the-sand need to apply to something so insignificant as a voicemail? 

“Hello, you’ve reached Abigail Scott. I’m sorry I can’t take your call right now. Please leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.” Two lies, three sentences. Something must be done about this, not just for me, but for all of us. 

I was rarely sorry that I missed someone’s call. It’s not like they were leaving on the midnight trail bound for the other coast. I can call them back at a moment’s notice. I can reach across the cosmos, via satellite and fiber optic and a dogged determination by Verizon to cover every area of the known planet, to pass back the baton of the missed call obligation. And I wouldn’t be getting back to them as soon as I possibly could. I’d like to have my morning coffee first.  

What’s more, in this self-contained, self-care system I’m trying to create, texts are left unread and emails unchecked. The little red alert bubble even reaches double digits by the end of most days. I’m starting to love it. 

Certainly I’d extend this same practice to my voicemail box, but do I need to clue callers into this fact? “I’ll get back to you as soon as I feel like it” seems so honest that it’s rude. But maybe that’s what healthy boundaries look like: sentiments that walk the fine line between polite and unrefined. 

Would I sacrifice potential new writing gigs, turn off new friends, irritate my father who already gets salty when he becomes a missed call? Would my recently discovered frontier of self-care force the people I care about or want to care about inbounds or out? 

It’s been said by many licensed therapists and unlicensed Instagram influencers who have read one Brene Brown book too many that the people who push back against your personal boundaries are the ones that benefitted from you having none in the first place. So, I guess the people that get turned off by my acknowledgement that I’ll get back to them whenever, or maybe not at all, shouldn’t be in my life anyway?

It’s 4:15 now. Maybe my contemporary voicemail box will start a revolution. Maybe it will convince other people to establish healthy boundaries at first contact, to ditch the rote reply, the false promise, the over extension of oneself via a pre-recorded message.

Maybe by declining calls, I’m offering individuals a moment of liberation, a chance to have the epiphany that they too needn’t lie to appease. They can say what they think and how they truly feel in their voice mailbox greeting. 

I envision a future in which we all may say something akin to the following: 

“Hello and thank you for calling. While I do want to acknowledge that communication via telephone call is about to be a lost art, I remain steadfast in my commitment to only employ this method to connect with old friends, far-flung family, and the doctor’s office. I humbly suggest that you do us both a favor and send a text instead.”