Thank you, this advice means a lot. Email is something I never thought of and I definitely plan on doing more of it from now on.
Email can be a useful tool and learning to communicate over a distance is really important, but I can't help but think you're going to hurt yourself if you see email as a substitute for face-to-face.
I did make sure to get with someone in person (with a printed version of the files I was working on) for certain thorny issues. But if you communicate well and succinctly via email, about 90%-95% of routine stuff at my job that required input from one of my superiors could be effectively handled by email. This eliminated the need to try to arrange face-to-face time, which can be logistically challenging when you both have busy schedules and deadlines.
This was a big stress point for coworkers of mine who learned the hard way that, no, your boss that you are squeeing at all the time is not actually your friend. I cultivated a professional relationship with my superiors. I was not able to squee at them and suck up and blather on. I was too sick to do all that stuff.
They didn't need to like me. They did need to respect my competence, answer my work related questions and sign off on things above my pay grade that required authorization. I was still getting that after the new team was formed and lacked a dedicated lead, so everyone was still required to seek certain things from our old lead, whomever that happened to be, until they could free up resources and assign a lead to the team. Other people were tearing their hair out.
Email does not work for everything. But if you learn to communicate well via email, for many things, it is actually superior to face time because you have a written record of your boss's authorization, professional opinion or the resource they directed you to. It isn't your word against theirs if something goes wrong. There is a paper trail. If you, in fact, did as you were told and it was the wrong thing, they go after your boss, not you. If they told you verbally and are not some kind of paladin-like being, the odds are high that you and they will "remember" it differently and you are the one that will take the fall.
However, I have to disagree 1000% on it not mattering if someone "likes" you. It matters a great deal. Of course, being an obvious brownnoser is contemptible. But being well-liked is the most important task of any and every employee. When push comes to shove, it's going to be easier for them to overlook your professional inadequacies than it will be to overlook their personal affectations.