Email Anxiety and the Epitome of Laziness

There are a handful of people in my life that spend a lot of time in their inbox.  And I find that I am both grateful and disgruntled about it.  Without their masses of forwards, between jokes and news, I would probably be less informed and have less giggles each day.  I’d also have less email anxiety.  Each time I check my mail, I think how many things I already haven’t read.  It makes me uncomfortable and irritated.  I just don’t have the time to get through them all and I don’t want my email to consume my life; too many other things do already.

The worst part is the sheer laziness of my habits when it comes to these emails.  Let me just say for the record, that if a forward has a link on it, and it requires me to click further to get to the point of the email; it’s not happening.  That would require a few seconds for something to load.  If pictures are embedded in the email, sure, I’ll scroll through.  Powerpoint, websites with pop-ups, dealing with a PDF and then having acrobat constantly requiring me to update and every website asking me for me sign up to view the complete story, no thank you.  Give me the story, pictures and/or video now, on this current screen or we’re through.

One day, six month from now, I will realize the magnitude of emails cluttering my life and I will go through and delete them all.  And I will feel bad about it.  For now, I will fool myself into believing that later I will check the twenty or so videos that were forwarded to me on a daily basis.  Not at work of course.  My phone will buzz throughout the day and I’ll check my email and there it is; something that will have to wait till I get home.  I’m certainly not going to sit at my desk and load it at work.  I will keep it for later and never touch it.  Instead I will scroll past it regularly while I’ll look for the one email of importance I’ve gotten in the last couple weeks.

I should feel that I can just delete when a subject line doesn’t interest me.  But in the back of my mind I’m thinking, “What if they ask me about that story about the monkey experiment, or the cargo ship of Chinese goods??”  So I keep them.  I tell myself I will check them later.  For the record though, they have asked and I’m not a good liar, so I stumble through with, “Oh wow, I know, crazy right?”

Sometimes I want to live off the grid.  Other times I want to slap myself for whining about getting email; particularly because I know I’ll be annoyed if I’m not getting any too.  I’d be mortified if my emailers read this, it’s not personal; it’s just overwhelming.  What a spoiled, technology brat I’ve become.  I also didn’t realize how much aggression this caused.  Whew, I sort of feel better.

Photo courtesy of trulia.com

At Peace With Paper

This week has been anything but exciting.  My highlight (so far) came from the fact that I perused our little town newspaper and found an ad that all county residents can drop off all personal documents they need shredded, during a free recycling event Saturday.  This is very exciting.  Do you know what this means?  It means that I can avoid sitting in front of my cheap, hand-me-down shredder for a few hours, while I destroy receipts, bills and credit card applications, to the sound of a whiney and overworked motor.

It means no paper cuts.

It means no more piles of “I’ll get to that”.

It means silence – less frustration – and no overheating small appliances.

I try to be organized, but my ambitions and lack of time only take me so far.  I have a file box with hanging folders that are appropriately labeled and organized.  Instead, I usually end up with a three inch pile of paperwork that is crammed between the tops of the folders and the lid.  Eventually the lid doesn’t close; I drag the box somewhere and it spews all over.  Not today.  I spent the last couple hours weeding through the least eighteen months of paper we “might need to reference one day” and I’m so ready for Saturday.

You can say I’m lame and ask why I’m actually wasting even more time on this by writing about it, but it’s truly exciting to me.  Just a couple months ago, I dreamed of having myself an office and a workable and clean workspace.  I’m so close.  My walls still need to be painted and my books are in Rubbermaid tubs for the moment, but my desk is perfect, as I’m not pushed up against a wall and I’m not seeing scattered piles of paper to distract me from the calm demeanor this room is supposed to enable.  I feel at peace with paper.

Now, what to do with my hoards of greeting cards that I’ve saved…

Sometimes I wish I were heartless.  My house would be so much less cluttered and my basement would be empty to build our dream pub.  For another day, I’m feeling too accomplished to put that kind of weight on my shoulders tonight.

Photo courtesy of rangershredding.com.