Unwanted Emails

11/8/2013

Today's inspiration for my blog came to me while I was drinking coffee and looking at the huge collection of emails I had in my "in" box, some of which go back to 2012!  Apparently, I clean up my in box about as often as I dust my teacup collection, which is pretty rare because it's a lot of work!

Just so you know I didn't just delete all the unsolicited emails I had (and there was a lot of them), I spent time (lots), unsubscribing to all the junk emails I have received since practically forever.  I don't know about you but in the beginning of emails, it was so exciting to get mail.  By now the novelty has worn off and more often than not that incoming sound on your cellphone means you have received more junk mail.  Even believing that my theory is correct, I don't think too many people can resist taking a peek at incoming messages, I now I can't.

So this morning with a passably warm cup of coffee and my beloved 60's music playing on my Pandora station, I settled in to begin the formidable task of contacting all these companies who have been cluttering up my inbox.  It would be nice if there was some kind of uniform language and/or location on websites, so you didn't have to waste half of your life looking for the tiny print.  If you have noticed all the promotions and the like on these websites practically scream look at me in big and bold print.  Companies don't want you to unsubscribe from their emails, so the print is small, and in some instances almost unreadable with my poor old eyes. 

Of course once you have hit the unsubscribe button, you generally have to provide your email address and select yet another button asking are you sure you want to be removed from their mailing list.  I actually had more than one occurrence where I couldn't even find a place to unsubscribe.  Guess I'll just have to resort to the old-fashioned delete button!  

Okay let's assume you have deleted all the junky emails from the inbox, but you have some old emails worthy of being saved.  I have created named folders for certain subjects such as: medical information, recipes, insurance and emails from the library, just to mention a few.  So after all my hard work of deleting and/or moving emails to specific folders, I still have 336 emails cluttering up my inbox.  Guess I'll have to take another stab at getting that number down by a few hundred or so.  I think what makes it so hard to make the decision to permanently delete an email, is the fear (possibly genuine) that you might need that email again in the future.  You and I both know that the odds of having to retrieve older emails is slim to none and yet our fingers almost always hover over the delete key!  

You can be sure that as I go about my day, the chiming of my cellphone will still cause me to check out incoming emails (even though I know that 99% of the time, what I receive is junk).  Reminds me of Pavlov's theory!  We humans just can't help ourselves. If you feel a need to take a break from reading this so you can check in with your electronic world, I will understand.

Please have a super Friday and a great weekend.  

P