Email Overwhelm

Wednesday March 3rd, 2010 - Lake Villa, IL

I did it! After putting it off for far too long, I finally got around to clearing out my huge backup of emails. I don’t really care if it impresses anyone else, I’m overjoyed. It doesn’t mean a whole lot in the big picture scheme of life, but what really does? This was for me.

For months I’ve been meaning to get to the pile that was backing up and it was getting a little out of hand. I was up to around 750 emails that I either hadn’t answered or pushed to the side to deal with later, knowing quite often later rarely comes. This time it did. Today.

I woke up at 4:30am and sat down at the computer ready to work. I knew I needed to do this and wasn’t going to allow myself any excuses for not at least putting a dent in such a gigantic pile. I’d blown it off too long, and I knew it. It had gotten to be way out of hand.

I can’t speak for everyone, but I would imagine most people have more than one email address somewhere. Usually there’s a home and a work, and since I work at home I have two basic emails that catch 99% of my mail. One is a trash receptacle that collects all the sweepstakes notices from Nigeria and the stellar deals on off brand male enhancements.

The other one is used for business contacts and bookings mostly, and whenever I want to conduct business, that‘s the one I use. Penis enlargement ads and Mafia Wars requests are at a minimum on that particular address but they still sneak through once in a while.

I started with my trash receptacle address and shrunk that one by 50 emails. Then I’d go to my business one and do the same. Sometimes I’d do it by time, ten or twenty minutes a side. Whatever it took, I was bound and determined to shrink them down and I totally did.

I’ve got 22 left in my trash bin and 55 left in my business one. Considering where I was just a few days ago, that’s a minor miracle. It would be like seeing a picture of Jesus with shoulder length hair one day and then seeing him with a flat top brush cut the next. It’s an unexpected and dramatic switch, and that’s what I feel I’ve done, but it’s a good thing.

This is all clearing the way for the shiny new stuff that’s coming into my life in the next little while. I don’t want to be worrying about unanswered emails from October when my focus should be on TODAY, and slightly looking ahead to the future too. This is my time.

There’s no guarantee I won’t let it get back to where it was before, but seeing how hard it was to clear all of these old ones out, I’m sure going to think about it next time. Email’s impact has been amazing, but there’s also a downside. It’s too difficult to keep up with all of it, at least it is for me. I’ve got to come up with a better system, this one isn’t working.

The good thing about these kinds of purges is that it reconnects with people I may have let drift away a little. I wrote to some comedian friends and already heard back from some of them, and it all feels right. I’ve got some work this week and next week begins the one man show test run in Saukville, WI at The Railroad Station. Things are falling into place.