My inbox runneth over
Ah, Thanksgiving. A time to appreciate all of our blessings. Truly we live in a country and culture of abundance. In so many areas we have far, far more than what we need or what we can keep organized.
The piles in my life are a reminder, a rather mocking one, that I absolutely do not have it all together. I have a bundle of newspapers that I cannot bear to put in recycling until I have given them — at least a quick thumbing through. Then there is the basket of clothes that need just a bit of mending. Another is a stack of barely looked-at magazines, along with a half dozen books bravely started but not finished. And then there are the regular household piles which demand immediate attention.
I read all the time about how such things lying about one’s house are not good for one’s mental health. I agree but can’t seem to part with most of the undone stuff so I have made a sort of wobbly peace with some of the piles.
When company comes, we somehow wrangle it all into order for a time but too quickly it catches up with me and again I give in and co-exist with varying amounts of disorder.
But apart from these all too visible physical piles in those well-known and well-lived areas of our house, the biggest pile of all is a hidden one.
Yet it too threatens my peace and well being.
It greets me each day when I open up my e-mail and add even more to the inbox. It may have started innocently enough with just one or two e-mail groups with homeschool moms sharing like interests. Yet somehow this has morphed into a unwieldy giant of way more groups than a homeschool mom can possibly manage.
There are groups which are local, statewide and national, groups which homeschool using the same methods as I do, groups who struggle with the same learning difficulties, curriculum idea groups, health-minded groups, nutrition-minded groups, political groups, legislative groups, current events groups and groups for specific local groups of which I am a member.
Even if one uses the digest option, it is often tempting to keep the mail in your inbox when it has something interesting, helpful or informs about a current event such as a field trip or other group activity.
Checking on e-mail can become a huge time waster. How can it be managed? What should be our attitude toward this friendly foe? What does it tell us about who we are or what we have become?
Should we unsubscribe from all the groups we are part of? Should we eschew joining any new groups? Should we do a complete purge and trash our inbox and start over?
That would be taking a sledgehammer to the problem when we probably just need to evaluate and make some specific decisions — more like a scalpel.
Here is what I plan to do. First of all, get rid of the obvious junk. See if you can unsubscribe from mailings which come regularly which you regularly ignore or which just pile up without even opening them. That is a sure sign you can live without them.
If you open something, read and delete it unless it is something which you have a valid reason for saving. Perhaps you could rename it with a date of when it becomes obsolete.
For some reason, I have come to believe that if I do not save something, it is gone forever. This is simply not true. In our technological age, with the wonder of search engines, if something has been posted on the Web, you will be able to find it again. The feeling that I have to save it or else, stems from a misguided sense that it all depends on me. The truth of the matter is, if I need to find some bit of information in the future, I most likely can find that exact bit or 20 more bits just like it or even better.
The beauty of Yahoo groups is that they, too, are searchable.
You can decide on the dozen or so groups that are current to your situation (less is better, but I am right at a dozen active groups that seem essential for now.) I have set the lively groups with many posts to digest form so I can quickly scan the topics and see if any are worth my time.
The quieter groups can be set to individual e-mails which can be read and deleted. Remember: read and delete! If you decide a particular group is not worth your daily time, unsubscribe or if you still want to consult the group periodically, set it to Web only.
Then you can go to your yahoo groups page and read the e-mails on whatever subject you need info on. I have kept my membership in certain groups, such as a nature study group but on Web-only setting.
When I need to find info on a nature study topic, I can go to my group’s page, click on that nature study group, do a search on the topic at hand, post a question on it, and read the resultant answers on the Web. Another option is to ask for answers to your question to be sent off list directly to you.
Create folders in your mail program but do not abuse this. Have folders for current interests only. Here are my folders:
Personal mail to answer, future ideas for ESPRIT, a different folder for co-ops and groups I am a part of currently, a folder for a professional organization, one for each support group I am a part of and participate in, recipes, folders for my children’s outside classes, links for ebooks and audio books, art/craft ideas, nature/science study, household info, general homeschooling, a misc. folder, and one for imediate response and a few more.
I make it a point to spend 10 minutes deleting before I download more mail. Sometimes I set aside even more time to just delete. Be ruthless!
E-mail is a huge blessing, think of all the file folders and file cabinet space one is saving! Not to mention its immediacy and the convenience of answering e-mail vs the interruptive phone. The point is that like so many other good things in our lives, too much of it becomes a hindrance.
Put e-mail in its proper place. Do not let it eat up too much of your time. Do not let it totally supplant a hand-written letter once in a while.
The other day my daughter got a hand-written letter from a friend she met a couple of summers ago. She made some remark about it at the lunch table. My son could not comprehend why in the world someone would hand write a letter, address an envelope, add a stamp and take it to the real live mailbox when they could, with so much ease and much greater speed, just zip off an e-mail.
“But I like holding a real letter and I like that you can decorate the envelope and I like opening it and looking at the beauty of the handwriting and the stationery,” protested my daughter. Later she explained to me that it takes a lot more thought and care and made her feel more individual and less like on online character.
The art of the handwritten letter is a whole other editorial!
Accept the blessing of e-mail but don’t let it become the untamed wild beast in your household. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
—JMT