I can’t complain. It’s not that I receive that many emails. But still….

Sure, I like to see what Lands End and IKEA and Folio Books are offering, plus a couple of shoe stores, and Tilleys, and LCBO Gourmet offers, and my PC Plus offers for the week, and Canadian Stage and the National Theatre and my daily NYT online , plus a few other current pitches, soon to drop away (?), oh, and Rexall, VIA Rail, Porter Airlines and Air Canada, and Rogers and Go Daddy..STOP. I mean, it’s not like a friend who is doing heavy-duty research and reaching all kinds of contacts who reach back to her, or another who is taking a course online and who gets assignments and corrections and comments from cohorts, or another who is ghost-writing a book and has to consult all the references. But I do receive Nicolas Kristoff’s newsletters (I like him), and the NYT’s Cooking for the Week, and the weekly book review. i signed on for a renewal of the TLS but i haven’t had time to read it. And I’m getting lengthy bulletins from Faerie Magazine - again, no time. I’m on Fitbit and don’t know how to respond to everything it asks of me. And then there are the surveys. I think they’re getting worse and more frequent. I am so grateful when I am told I don’t qualify for their survey - like, I’m too old or I don’t have a car, or I have almost no electronic companions. (You’re one of the few.)

So - I am faithful and diligent. I check my email every day and I respond and delete and file and download and print out. Ay there’s the rub. After the print out, what? I have piles of paper on either side of me and piling up on an adjacent table and a three-tier file holder, and I hate to mention the print outs of my current works in progress that require notes or rewrites or even filing - gone but not forgotten and still nagging at my conscience. I also keep copies of my blog, coming up three years now. Oh dear.

In another part of the forest, that is, not in my office but on another desk in another room (I call it my Paper Desk), lie other piles of paper: bills and receipts and clippings and tear sheets of stuff I want to keep or send or file, and notes and thank-yous I must write, and birthday cards (thank heaven for Jacquie Lawson!) to send (some people don’t have email), plus ageing To-Do and Follow-Up folders with noodges and ideas….I can’t go on.

When computers first became available to the general public, someone predicted that we would soon be living in a paperless society. I wish.

No, I don’t.

My Summer Holiday: I’m still in Ontario, about 3 hours’ drive north and west of Toronto, on a 50-acre property with a large pool, a forest, 2 Malamute dogs, and four brilliant women writers with whom I am humbly pleased to pass two days. Too content. It’s difficult to get worked up about anything when I am so blessed and pampered.

But I hear in my head the screams and cries of fellow human beings fleeing the horrible war-torn countries and I see the physical devastation caused by the bombs and destruction and I feel guilty and apologetic for being so blessed and fortunate, and yet I sit here and do NOTHING. And I apologise (again) for being so maudlin and useless. I live on the periphery of experience and on the outskirts of life and I indulge in twaddle. No excuse.

I remember reading what Jane Austen said after hearing reports of another battle (remember she lived during the Napoleonic wars): “So many thousands killed. How dreadful. And how glad I am that I know none of them.” Me too, I’m ashamed to say.

I remember when one of my children (my older daughter) had her appendix out. The day after surgery (slow by our standards today, but there were complications), she walked across her hospital room with difficulty and pain,and I shuddered in utter sympathy, feeling (?) her pain. Not exactly, of course, but so involved. It occurred to me then that if we were all caring, genuinely caring, human beings, we would feel that pain and that involvement with all other human beings, not just those who are related by blood. And do something.

We’re all related by blood.