I was twitter-spired by a tech savvy friend of mind to reach the singularity of all singularities…mail inbox 0. A few years ago I got g-mail and with getting g-mail I got rid of worrying about space. Every time I would go to delete something g-mail would say, “Don’t do that buddy! I got a ton of space. It can sit here…forever.”
Flash forward to almost ten years later and I have listened to g-mail. Now I have a constantly growing inbox with thousands of messages. A high percentage of these are unread or junk that I keep because I’m “going to get off that list” or “finally use that.” Instead, I never do and my inter-clutter grows. In those ten years my life and how I live has simplified but my online life has blown up.
This all started with AIM. My freshman year of college I got AIM. It was amazing. Hour after hour I spent talking to friends and…well…I don’t even remember what it was that I did to waste time on it. Still, I did. Little could I know that in a few year I would be balancing several social networking sites for different groups and myself along with online role-playing. How could I imagine the world of twitter in the year 2000?
So, the complication has increased online while I seek to simplify my real life. Now, I’m realizing, I must do both. I must find a way to live simplier and to do that I must have a simplier online presence. (I’m also playing with the idea of vegitarianism but this southern girl loves her bacon. We will see.) Until they make digsby for mac I’m going to tackle each one but, to not get overwhelmed, I thought I would start with one…mail inbox 0.
I figured, “How hard can it be to delete e-mails you haven’t looked at in 7 to 10 years?” That was before I realized what I was burying in my inbox. There are, of course, the important e-mails. The “this is your username” and “welcome to” messages. Then there are other corpses.
First, there is a huge section of e-mails from when I worked with Easy Street Players. It’s nothing but a bunch of back and forths about costumes, scripts and set needs but, for some reason, I’ve never gotten rid of it. It’s been over a year since Easy Street existed and my life has pushed me away from theatre and back home to music but I still hold onto these relics for unknown reason.
Mail Inbox o: Easy Street Mail…gone.
The next is a quick e-mail I sent to my brother while he was in Iraq. It simply says “Hello. Just wanted to say I love you!” That was all I could do. You see, my little brother is a hero. He went to Iraq and did work that saved that lives of others. He did it without concern for his own well being and to this day says it was his best assignment because he “really felt like” his “job made positive changes.” He sometimes talks about going back. It makes me scared.
Now, our family got off easy. My brother, the hero, had a rather safe job for being in a warzone. Originally he was suppose to be in RV’s, driving through the IED filled streets, taking down data. I was pretty sure he was not coming back. At the last minute something happened and the people at his training realized how smart Hero was and somehow he ended up being the guy who processed all that data.
This meant a few things for Hero and our family. He was now much more valuable to the military and so kept in much safer conditions. He was not really allowed to leave base much. He found it frustrating. We found it comforting. In short, being smart and nerdy saved my little brother’s life. Still, we worried and so, one night up after a really awful dream filled with sand and burnt flesh on September 11th of 2006 at 3:48am, I sent off that little line to him.
I had not realized the date until the next day.
At 11:18 that night I got a response with large green letters at the top which said, “Classification: UNCLASSIFIED.” I guess I posed no threat to the US military but it was still a little unnerving. It started back with “Then I will send one back saying that I love you too!” He then went on to talk about seeing Drowning Pool play “Let the Bodies Hit the Floor” the night before at the concert.
Most of the times I talked to Chris it was by phone. That was the only e-mail I sent. I would feel guilty over it but, to be honest, it was all I could do. I kinda pulled myself away from it, worried that if I started thinking of my brother as alive and somewhere else it would hurt worse when the inevitable happened. I did not have a positive outlook on the war and figured that our family had the worst luck.
I was wrong.
We had the best luck and my little brother is home and a hero not only to the military but to me and our family. I’ve held onto that e-mail to remind me to push myself and not take anything for granted. It’s there to tell me to suck it up and say what I need to say no matter how hard.
Mail Inbox 0: Brother in Iraq E-Mail…starred.
Then, in the deepest recesses, I found something truly unexpected. A few years ago I had a falling out with a close friend. This breakdown happened while we were in different parts of the country, so most of this downward spiral happened via e-mail. I had thought that I had deleted all those messages a few months ago. I wasn’t mad or anything I had just been holding onto them for some unknown reason and I was very happy with the way my life was shaping up and I decided I needed to stop holding onto stuff and punishing myself over it. These messages were like an anchor connecting me to this time.
Now, I’m not happy with what happened and I, like all people in situations like this, wished things could have been different but I also see the other side. The whole event gave me a clearer picture of the person I wanted to be and the kind of people I wanted in that life. It sucked at the time but my life has turned out pretty well so I would not undo it because, in someway, it helped get me here.
There were a few times when I tried to get back in contact. This attempt wasn’t because I was looking to get my best friend back. I was looking to move forward. A clean slate and a fresh start to simply be. To not worry about accidentally offending that person anymore and know they were as okay as I was. I guess, even though I didn’t particularly like the person anymore, I still loved them. They had been like family and, despite the fact that I didn’t want to be buddies, I did want to know they were okay. The reception was, understandably, less than warm and I realized I needed to leave it behind.
So I deleted the e-mail…I thought.
What I actually did was compile them into one single e-mail of everyone they had sent and all the ones I had sent in return. There it was, starring at me, everything that imploded our relationship into smoke and ash, the whole back and forth. I wanted to sit down and read it. I wanted to masochistically tear open the healed white-pink of my scarred skin, cracking through my ribs to prod at my own heart with dirty fingers. I wanted to listen to Dashboard Confessional in a corner while I read “The Perks of Being a Wallflower.” I needed an argyle sweater…STAT.
Instead…I deleted it. That’s new to me. The old me would have already been on chapter 2, cursing the paper cuts and, at the same time, thinking I deserved them. I just want to be living in the moment, feeling the now. The things that happened, happened and there is nothing I can do to take them back. Besides, when I truly live in the moment, I find myself happy.
I find myself noticing the delight of the couch blanket against my skin. Zoning in on now I find my husband’s smell mixing with the outside air to make the sent of our home. I hear his sigh and feel a shiver run up my back. (I am still so attracted to him that I often need to take myself a little out of now or I would be naked more than society allowed.) My cat is so beautiful and the moment I take notice of her with my eyes she senses my presence and walks over to be with me. We sit and just are. We don’t stimulate, we just be.
There was also a copy of my first wedding ceremony in there, too. Now gone.
Mail Inbox 0: Past relationship disasters…deleted.
So, I did not reach the singularity. I am not at zero, but I am at 72. That is quite an improvement. Maybe one day I will be as cool as @harper. In the mean time, I have to go. My husband is flirting with me from across the couch and this blog no longer seems important.
