William Wallace’s email

Since I retired, I’m not as diligent about checking my email as I once was. When I do get on, I’m astonished at all the spam; hundreds and hundreds of junk emails from people IDK/don’t care about. Thank you, social media, for chumming the Internet with my email address.

Wading through all this crap, sifting through all the BS for an important financial statement or email from a friend is a wearying affair. And as fast as I block and unsubscribe, new spam pops up. It’s like a movie where the guy hits the villain with a 2×4 but then foolishly turns away as the bad guy slowly rises.

After two months of ignoring it during the holidays, I finally logged on this week: Almost 15,000 unread emails. WTH? I rubbed my eyes… maybe it was 1,500. Nope. I seethed.

I had a flashback to my mentor at IBM…a wise older woman, Maxine, with whom I shared an office. Every January 2nd, she’d open her email, do Ctrl+A, then delete. Goodbye, all of last year’s hassles, unfinished business…stuff from everybody from the loading dock guy to Senior Executives.

The first time I saw this, I was flabbergasted. “How can you do that?” I asked in disbelief. “What if there was something important in there?” She looked at me calmly over the half-wall that divided our workspace. “Oh, if it’s important enough, they’ll get back to me.” She left to get coffee and my admiration for her grew ten fold.

“Maxine’s Maxim” came to me as I sat there pondering this gigantic intrusion on my time. Really! She had it right. Could I actually….? Screw it.

Without giving myself time to think, I started. My email client shows 100 emails per screen and I gleefully scrolled through screen after screen, checking the “all” button at the top, then delete. My spirits soared; it was a blood bath. “Freeeedom!” as Mel Gibson screamed in Braveheart.

I gave a savage boot to phishing scams, dire political alerts, and requests for donations. Infomercials (“Make sure your volume is turned all the way up.”). Sales at places I never shop. Pitches from financial institutions and charities. On and on….blecch.

Man, what a difference. In no time at all, the carnage was over; my email mountain was history. Yeah, I might have deleted something interesting that I had saved, intended to do “some day”… but if I hadn’t done it yet, I probably never would.

And yes, I might have deleted some personal emails and stuff I was retaining for sentimental reasons. But I think Marie Kondo would approve.

As I arose to get my coffee, I thought about Maxine. Think I’ll look her up and let her know I finally made her proud.