E-mail is a good thing.
I really like it. It’s so much more casual than a phone call, so much less obligatory than a lunch-date. It’s a simple, quick way to keep in touch with people.
But it has a horrible way of backing up on me.
Perhaps you know what I mean? Perhaps you, like me, find yourself reading through e-mail and then coming across an e-mail that wants More Attention than you are ready, at that moment, to give it. It isn’t that you don’t care, or that it is something you’d like to avoid; it’s just that it wants more time, and so you save it for Later.
Problem is, Later sinks to the bottom of your inbox, and new e-mails keep coming in on top of it, so that eventually it descends out of sight and you forget that this particular e-mail is there, and you Move On To Other Things.
I’ve been good about it, for the most part. You know, going in, answering quick e-mails, sending others, and keeping an eye on the messages that want more attention. Once in a while I go in and clean house, giving more time to the project so that I can take care of the waiting messages.
But Still.
Recently, things had gotten Pretty Bad, and this was due less to the mass of e-mail in my box and more to the Ridiculous Busy-ness of my days and evenings. I just didn’t get into the inbox often enough. And when I did, I answered the Most Necessary e-mails, and sometimes I didn’t get in there at all, and, before I knew it, things were out of control.
At about the same time, or maybe before, Bill noticed that our family laptop (to be distinguished from Bill’s work laptop or my work laptop) was getting Slow. Outrageously Slow. Agonizingly Slow. So slow that one was discouraged from trying to log on to the internet. Or write in one’s blog. Or check e-mail.
So Bill decided to clean it up. Yep. He went in there and Removed Things. Yes, he removed Everything– including Everything We Wanted, then used the Recovery Disks to put the computer back to the way it was when we bought it, and then reloaded Everything We Wanted.
Which was good. So Good.
The laptop is humming along now. No agonizing delays for the internet at our house. No waiting for the machine to boot, or asking it to do the same thing three times. This laptop is Reborn.
And so, incidentally, is my e-mail. Yes, when Bill cleaned everything, he cleaned Everything. And now all my addresses are gone, and all my old messages, including the invitation to my 20th high school reunion, including the e-mail from the wife of my old youth-group leader, including the survey my sister Meghan sent on to me in January.
I was going to answer that one. I Really Was.
I can’t write to people so easily these days. Where once I simply had to start typing someone’s name in, now I have to go hunting up the e-mail address (on paper, for crying out loud), which means, in effect, that I’m not writing to people (because, honestly, Who Has The Time to go hunting up addresses?).
But there’s an upside. I’m not Behind anymore. I don’t have unanswered e-mails languishing in my inbox. I’m on top of my game.
Until tonight, anyway. Because just now I logged onto e-mail and watched in amazement as the inbox total climbed and climbed.
No, I’m not the most popular person in the world. Far from it. But it was amazing to sit here on the sofa and watch the mail Double In Size. Meanwhile, I have my students’ recent tests just waiting on the coffee table to be graded. When will I have time to read the e-mail???
It’s best not to worry about these things, right? Just do the next thing: grade the tests. The e-mail will be there in the morning. And later in the afternoon. And tomorrow night before you go to bed.
And before you go to bed, do me a favor, would you? Just shoot me a quick e-mail. That way, when I want to write to you, I won’t have to go hunting for your address.
I promise I’ll write back.
