365 True Things: 148/Email

Yesterday a friend messaged me on Facebook, asking me—very nicely—why I never respond to her emails.

I immediately wrote back and apologized. I also explained that my inbox was ridiculously out of control, standing at 2,600-plus messages. Once something scrolls out of view—and that happens very quickly when you don't delete anything—there's pretty much no hope.

I did recently adopt the habit of flagging messages I wanted to keep in my consciousness. But that's like putting a band-aid on a shark bite.

Clearly, something needed to happen. So yesterday, I bit the bullet and got down to cleaning. I arranged the "From" list alphabetically and, snik snak, deleted almost everything: whittled the whole thing down to about 65 messages.

And this morning, I stuck most of those in individual boxes—and then I went through some of those boxes and got rid of old stuff.

Here's my inbox now:

Everything that remains is an "action item" of some sort:

• arrange get-together with a few SAR folks
• get the damn printer working
• find the photo a friend requested
• finish my alphabet diptych project (I've been stuck on V for months—though I know exactly what I want to take a picture of
  . . . maybe I should do that this afternoon? combine it with a hike? hmmm?)
• send a CD to an author
• apply to a writer's residency
• get back to Norwegian study with Duolingo
• and, just for fun, look into taking archery lessons

As messages have come in this morning, I've responded immediately as needed (which runs counter to yesterday's resolution to check email only once a day, but first things first). And I've deleted with a vengeance.

And now? My Sent box stands at 5,495 messages. It was last cleaned out in February 2011. I'm contemplating wholesale destruction. What do you think?