Yesterday I opened my personal email account and noticed something astonishing. In the upper righthand corner, Yahoo quietly reminded me (the type is super small, folks) that I was viewing messages 1-20 of ___. Guess the number. Seriously, just think of a number.
Were you guessing 100? Five hundred, perhaps? Because you’d be wrong. I had been hoarding nearly 1,000 emails in my Inbox. Any other day I’d stay in denial, read my new messages and leave them to rot in the Inbox, as well.
But something in me snapped. I started clicking my way through these purgatory messages, which were neither in the trash nor designated a proper folder. They were just sitting in Inbox, as if I would get back to responding to that email you sent me in February 2006 like no time had passed. “Dear Jane, Sorry it took so long to get back to you! I got sucked into a parallel universe time warp and …”
I’m not the only one who is feeling the urge to keep their Inbox clean. Jena over at Bone and Branch did the same thing recently, noting that “it feels fantastic in a big fat way!” I concur, Jena, I concur.
As I hit “delete” on old travel plans, 2007 TurboTax receipts and expired coupons to the Moroccan restaurant, I imagined myself plucking weeds from my garden of correspondence. There are zero weeds now, so when you send me a flower I’ll be more likely to see it.