The E-Mail Backlog (Scheduled Post)

I am typing this on a Wednesday evening at the library, away from the occasional yelling of my folks.  It's actually peaceful.  I told them that I was coming here to study.  Total lie.  Well, if I get off my ass, a partial lie.  But I like just going off and being my introverted self, listening to songs on YouTube, blogging this on a fast and reliable computer ... and, amongst other things, going through my e-mail.

Partially because this started when I was in Hong Kong, because I am no longer at the test scoring place, partially because the test scoring place doesn't allow you to check your mail during work, partially because I am tentative of using my old computer at home, and partially because I am tentative of using our old and slow wi-fi at home, I have allowed my main Yahoo! account to balloon.  However, I let it -- or had to let it -- balloon to that many unread e-mails because, ironically, after my parents were away I found myself busy doing things, necessary and optional, and not checking up on my e-mail.

When I opened up my e-mail at the library tonight (Wednesday night), I had 800 unopened e-mails.

People who work actual jobs are right: E-Mail can get away from you if you don't keep on top of it.  They're also right in another sense -- a lot of e-mail is impersonal, if not necessarily junk.  I have had maybe three e-mails that were phishing schemes.  But most of it are newsletters from places I signed up to of my own volition, websites like job searches, rental car companies, airline sales sites and political groups.  I could unsubscribe from these places to cut down on e-mail crap in the future -- in other words, to avoid situations like this.  But I'm not.  I wanted to sign up for all of them, just in case some little link or job offer or donation appeal or cheap airline ticket speaks to me and I want to see it.  (With one exception: The goddamn Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has sent me e-mail after e-mail even after I unsubscribed at least three times.  Ignoring my request is doing you no favors in order to fight the Republicans in the government.  Christ.)

I had dreams of just clicking the Up Arrow in my Yahoo! and just melt down the e-mails.  But because I'm sidetracking myself with a bunch of other things -- printing out something for Mother, checking Facebook, doing this -- I will be lucky if I get through 100 messages.  Yahoo! occasionally doesn't advance to the next message either, so I have to reload the whole thing, scroll down to the earliest message, and climb that hill again.  Uh, yeah, this will take more time than I planned.

And this does not bode well at all for the e-mails I have to go through on my Hotmail account, which, as of press time, I think is above 26,000 and extends back to 2012.