The vibration of my phone against the workbench was enough to make the 102-year-old piece of cobalt glass in my left hand shudder. It was a rhythmic, insistent buzzing, 12 pulses in quick succession that signaled a Slack channel going nuclear. I shouldn’t have looked. I was in the middle of grozing-a word I only realized last week I’ve been mispronouncing as ‘grossing’ for the better part of 22 years-shaping the edge of a fragment with pliers to fit into a lead channel. But the digital pull is a gravity all its own. I set the pliers down, wiped the glass dust from my palms, and saw the message that ruins any professional’s afternoon. It was from my project lead, and it said, simply: ‘Do you have a second? We need to chat.’

We have entered an era of digital body language where the stakes are high but the dictionary is missing. When someone Slacks you ‘Okay,’ do they mean ‘I have received this information and am satisfied,’ or do they mean ‘I am currently seething and this is the only non-combative word I can manage’? There is a profound difference between ‘Okay’, ‘Okay.’, and ‘K.’ In the physical world, I would have the benefit of seeing their pupils dilate or hearing the register of their voice. In the world of instant messaging, I only have the cold, hard pixels. For those of us who work with our hands, like me and my 12 colleagues at the studio, this transition into high-frequency digital communication is particularly jarring. We are used to the slow, tactile feedback of lead and solder, not the frantic, 62-message-per-hour pace of a heated group chat.

The Cognitive Load of Unspoken Rules

I spent the next 22 minutes staring at that message, unable to return to my cobalt glass. The cognitive load of interpreting digital tone is a hidden tax on our productivity. It is emotional labor that we don’t account for in our 32-hour work weeks. We are constantly scanning for threats in the form of a missing exclamation point or an unusually brief response. I remember a time, perhaps 12 years ago, when an email was just an email. It sat in your inbox until you were ready for it. Now, the ‘typing…’ bubble is a form of psychological warfare. Seeing that bubble appear, disappear, and then reappear for 32 seconds without a resulting message is enough to trigger a full-blown stress response.

The Emoji Minefield

This isn’t just a matter of ‘being sensitive.’ It’s a fundamental shift in how our brains process social cues. When the ‘rules’ are unspoken and constantly evolving, our brains stay in a state of high alert. I’ve noticed that when the Slack channel gets particularly tense, my ability to focus on the delicate lead lines of a window restoration drops by at least 32 percent. My hands lose their steadiness. I become irritable. This constant state of low-grade social anxiety is a silent killer of creative flow. We are essentially forcing our nervous systems to navigate a dark room filled with sharp objects, never knowing when we’re about to bump into a misunderstanding.

We add ‘lol’ to the end of sentences that aren’t funny just to soften the blow of a direct request. It’s an exhausting dance. I eventually replied to my project lead. ‘Sure, what’s up?’ I spent 12 seconds deciding whether to include a smiley face. I decided against it, fearing it might look like I wasn’t taking the ‘need to chat’ seriously. Then I waited. Another 32 seconds of the typing bubble. It turns out, he just wanted to know if I had seen the crate of 82 yellow glass rondels that had arrived that morning. My heart rate slowly began to descend, but the damage was done. My morning flow was broken, and I was left with that lingering, metallic taste of adrenaline in my mouth. It took me nearly 72 minutes to get back into the ‘zone’ with my glasswork.

Digital Hygiene and Physiological Health

This cycle of ping-react-recover is not sustainable for the human body. We weren’t designed to be ‘on’ in this specific, ambiguous way. It contributes to a sense of dysregulation that bleeds out of the workspace and into our personal lives. When we talk about wellness, we often focus on ergonomics or diet, but we rarely talk about the hygiene of our digital interactions. The way we talk to each other on these apps is directly impacting our physiological health. I’ve found that working with a team at White Rock Naturopathic helped me realize how much of my chronic tension was actually coming from this exact kind of sensory and social overstimulation. They pointed out that my nervous system was stuck in a ‘fight or flight’ loop, not because of the glass I was cutting, but because of the phone sitting next to it.

[The digital ping is a phantom limb that won’t stop itching.]

We need a new set of protocols. Perhaps it’s as simple as an ‘anti-anxiety’ rule for managers: never send ‘we need to talk’ without including a five-word summary of the topic. ‘We need to talk about the lunch order’ is a world away from ‘We need to talk.’ We also need to give each other the grace to be brief without being ‘mad.’ If I send a message that ends in a period, it shouldn’t be interpreted as a declaration of war. It should be interpreted as a sentence. But we are far from that reality. Right now, we are in the ‘wild west’ of digital etiquette, and we are all suffering from the resulting dust storms.

Finding the Silence

I’ve started leaving my phone in a separate room for 92 minutes at a time while I work. The first 12 minutes are always the hardest; I feel a twitch in my pocket, a phantom vibration. But then, the silence starts to feel like a thick, protective layer of felt. The cobalt glass starts to look more vibrant. My breathing deepens. We have to acknowledge the cost of this ‘always-available’ culture. It’s not just about the time spent typing; it’s about the mental real estate consumed by the ‘what-ifs.’ What if they’re mad? What if I missed a deadline? What if that ‘ha’ was sarcastic? These questions are like small cracks in a window pane; if you don’t address them, they will eventually span the entire surface. We are 102 percent responsible for the boundaries we set, yet we feel 0 percent empowered to set them.

Stillness in the Light

As I finished the edge of the cobalt piece, the sun hit the studio at exactly 2 p.m. The light through the glass cast a deep, calming blue across my hands. It was a reminder that some things are best understood through direct experience, not through a screen. The rules of the chat app will continue to change, but the needs of the human nervous system remain the same as they were 102 years ago. We need stillness. We need clarity. And occasionally, we need to put the phone in a drawer and just look at the glass.