So, why is this post being written at 2:15am on Wednesday instead of on Tuesday like it’s supposed to be? Well, I could tell you about a few things: a work emergency, a dental emergency that’s caused me to have an even more erratic sleep schedule for the past few days, but…actually, I just spent the past hour going through my email inbox. Trying to get things cleared out and ready for my night. Because anxiety. Because it’s the first (or second) thing I do. Because I have toooooo many things coming through, and it’s just getting out of hand.
A Facebook post in a group I’m in actually inspired this post. People were comparing notes on how many unread emails were in their email inboxes and giving and receiving advice on how to clear them out…if at all. I saw some pretty huge numbers there, which honestly gave me heart palpitations, so I felt just a tiny bit better. But only a bit. See, I just went through a massive unsubscribe purge recently, which helped the situation a lot. But…there’s still a lot of business emails, and emails coming from people that I follow and want to read, but when these emails pour in, I just want to hide. Seriously. An hour a day, folks. I’ve joked that I need an assistant just to manage my email. I also routinely get those all-important business emails in spam despite whitelisting numerous times, so there’s always a spam email sweep added onto that. It derails my day if there’s a lot.
So what am I to do?
Purge again. Yeah, I could get a bit more brutual with this. If I haven’t read it in say, three to six months, maybe I won’t read it, ever. Out it goes. Maybe?
Set up filters/folders. This would work, except that I am one of those super visual people that needs to see something right in front of me, or it’s literally not there and I won’t even look at it. Which would cause me to miss all kinds of important things. Right now, everything I need to Address Later is flagged, but even that fails sometimes because if the flagged stuff moves too far below where I can see it….I forget all about it. So that isn’t really a solution.
Set up another email account just for that stuff. And maybe junk mail, too. Maybe? But that’s just another email to log into. I already have…three? And logging into the main one, with all this crap, causes me to not even look at the others for days. Which led to me once not looking at my business account, which is attached to my newsletter. I couldn’t get in, and I didn’t know it, and I’d set up a giveaway, and I couldn’t figure out why no one was entering. I even mentioned it in the NEXT newsletter. So a reader sent me an email to my main account (thank God!) which prompted me to investigate….get back into my business account…and there they were. Twenty or so emails. I felt like a real jerk for that one. I even sent an apology newsletter and extended the giveaway.
Keep the status quo. Do a sort of triage: Flag stuff to be Addressed Later. Handle Urgent Stuff now, and let the rest…handle it whenever. If ever. And try not to feel so damn anxious? (And not spend half my night going through those other emails when I’m supposed to be working because anxiety….)
Why do I feel so anxious, anyway? Well, I don’t like how it looks, all those unread emails staring back at me, or the idea that something important might be hiding in there. Especially since I had a few incidents where I’ve missed some important emails in the deluge, or simply did not receive them (which wasn’t my fault, but still). Or now, I have a few email addresses that bounce on a regular basis that require extra steps, and that takes extra time and is maddening in itself. As for why, I couldn’t tell you. No one knows. They just…do that. Their email program won’t play nice with mine….despite the fact that mine is very nice, thankyouverymuch.
So, that’s my story. If anyone has any ideas, I’d love to hear them. Till then, I’ll be in the corner, curled in the fetal position, praying to the email gods for the fortitude to make it through another day of Email Triage.