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.