Inbox. Consider this a notice:
We’re at war, and I intend to win…sometimes, sort of.
Even after filtering this and that, after creating folders that automatically capture God knows what at the speed of light, you still manage to reproduce faster than rabbits. In the morning, there you are, grinning, waiting for me to come to and dig in. To be sure, there are many days when I marvel, when I’m honestly astounded by the joy, content and depth of notes that arrive from all over the planet, and from young and not so young alike, who wrote to share what hungers, hurts, made them laugh or sent their spirits high.
My favorite email? It’s the one that comes now and then…mostly then, which are early morning updates from my Google calendar that tell me, “you have no appointments today.” I like that email. It makes me smile, actually. My least favorite emails are those sappy, sentimental Hallmark rejects that begin with, "This is a true story..." Then there are the ones that say, "Please answer the following twenty-five questions, it will totally change your life!" Well, what if I don't want to totally change my life? "Delete!" Or the proverbial "Ten things to live by" lists that rumble through my inbox now and then. Of course, there are just a few of these kinds of emails that I do happen to like! And here's one for example! However, the mac-daddy grand prize winner in this overall category is fast becoming all things Twitter! I don't need to know that so and so has just brushed their teeth and is headed out for the night. And who the hell is Dominique Francis, anyway? (And yes I know, as a blogger, I too use Twitter. But you will never see a tweet from me that says, "I'm going to the mall now.")
Another one that makes my eyes glaze over are emails and any attachments connected to them, that feature cats. Now before people start calling PETA just know that I like cats a lot. In fact we have two of them. They're neat, cute, very intelligent and also very much alive. And that's key. But cats depicted online should be banned from the Internet. And Photoshop should be prohibited from ever allowing images of kitties to be shopped for any purpose whatsoever! Someone should file legislation that makes it a crime, punishable with a week away from being online, for anyone sending sappy emails or images of cats, any cats, period. These otherwise wonderful folks would get one warning, and after that violation, the laptop police would arrive and put their modems into a lock-box for one week!
Another favorite offender is any number of my dear and precious youthful clients, whom, we are told, are now to be referred to as “digital natives,” (As in, being born pre-wired into the digital age) who have basically three approaches to keyboarding that they use interchangeably. The first is a twofer, who write to me using all caps or no caps at all. The second are twelve-hundred word missives from teens that arrive in one, long, exhausting paragraph that ends with, ‘Please write back soon, okay?” And the final winning offender in this category are emails that arrive from teens as “text speak.” yadadamean, dude? (You know what I mean, dude?)
So every now and then I amuse myself and announce (pretend?) that I've actually "caught up" with all my emails. I'll get down to one or two surviving emails (seed stock) in my inbox and call it a victory. I might even playfully brag to my wife about it, (who strangely couldn't care less!) "Whatever you do," I tell myself, "Just don't hit refresh!"
But before the inevitable happens, I log off, triumphant and a bit grateful, really, with an appreciation for being connected to people and topics that matter most to me. As we all know, there's nothing in an inbox that we didn't help to put there in one way or another. Still, as I leave my desk and head for bed, I'm convinced that there's a little man inside my computer that springs to life the moment I walk away.
Kevin Lee
