E-mail milestones
People, it has taken weeks and weeks of dedication, hard work, and a strict maintenance regime. But my e-mail inbox (personal, not work, which is another story for another day) (not really) (as in, I'm not going to tell any stories about my work inbox) has been down to, or even under, 50 messages for one whole week now. That's as many messages as fit on a single page for Gmail. Just one page! Just 50 messages! After like a year of not being able to get it under 100! It's like losing half your weight in an intensive starvation diet, but without any blood in your urine or unpleasant aroma of ketosis.
Sure each and every one of the remaining messages represents an actual letter-type-thing with an actual author who needs to actually be addressed. And sure some of them are the kinds of messages you can't just dash off responses to, for example, a message from an old friend who many years ago (at a really inappropriate time) suggested a threesome with his then-current girlfriend, also a friend, because we were "all going to be sharing a hotel room anyway" (nb that I was two weeks into a devastating breakup and still living with the devastator in question, barely ambulatory, and sharing the hotel room in a desperate effort to get away from both one man in particular and men in general). It turns out that this old friend is now married but based on his e-mail I'm thinking maybe not so "married" and I wonder just what he had in mind when he suggested that we meet up the next time he's in Spookytown. Of course by this point the, let's see, 10 months between his e-mail and my still-to-be-sent response might have suggested to him a certain reluctance to engage in anything other than dining activities. (And you'd think he'd remember that "No married men" is my Rule #1, although this was surely less of an issue when I was in my early and mid-twenties.) Also not so easy to respond to will be several college friends looking for updates, an ex-boyfriend in a faraway land who is I guess expecting an e-mail in a language I can't really write grammatically anymore, and four former students all looking for academicky advice of some kind. Now that I'm so skinny e-mail wise, I wonder how much more e-mail weight loss I should go for. Is a nicely plump 50 messages a good maintenance weight? Should I try to lighten the load even more and then try to stay that way? Should I start putting more food directly in the garbage without trying to digest it? Or throw things right back at people without giving said things time to absorb? Maybe I'll think about all these options as I head back and aim for 45 by the night's end. If I look pale and drawn the next time you see me, it'll probably be due to these drastic measures...
Sure each and every one of the remaining messages represents an actual letter-type-thing with an actual author who needs to actually be addressed. And sure some of them are the kinds of messages you can't just dash off responses to, for example, a message from an old friend who many years ago (at a really inappropriate time) suggested a threesome with his then-current girlfriend, also a friend, because we were "all going to be sharing a hotel room anyway" (nb that I was two weeks into a devastating breakup and still living with the devastator in question, barely ambulatory, and sharing the hotel room in a desperate effort to get away from both one man in particular and men in general). It turns out that this old friend is now married but based on his e-mail I'm thinking maybe not so "married" and I wonder just what he had in mind when he suggested that we meet up the next time he's in Spookytown. Of course by this point the, let's see, 10 months between his e-mail and my still-to-be-sent response might have suggested to him a certain reluctance to engage in anything other than dining activities. (And you'd think he'd remember that "No married men" is my Rule #1, although this was surely less of an issue when I was in my early and mid-twenties.) Also not so easy to respond to will be several college friends looking for updates, an ex-boyfriend in a faraway land who is I guess expecting an e-mail in a language I can't really write grammatically anymore, and four former students all looking for academicky advice of some kind. Now that I'm so skinny e-mail wise, I wonder how much more e-mail weight loss I should go for. Is a nicely plump 50 messages a good maintenance weight? Should I try to lighten the load even more and then try to stay that way? Should I start putting more food directly in the garbage without trying to digest it? Or throw things right back at people without giving said things time to absorb? Maybe I'll think about all these options as I head back and aim for 45 by the night's end. If I look pale and drawn the next time you see me, it'll probably be due to these drastic measures...
posted by Pangea at 10:40 PM
2 Comments:
I try to throw things right back at people without letting them absorb. But somehow my inbox keeps getting bigger. Thanks to your post, I now realize I'm suffering from an electronic communication disorder.
Pangea goes to Spookytown...writing that's not just good, it's good for you(tm).
Crap! I have this blog set to notify me of new comments, so your comment, C., actually showed up as a message in my inbox. Moving me back up to 49 - so close! So perilously close. Luckily the trash was just steps away. Ach, the hidden dangers...
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