I want to declare bankruptcy.
I am overwhelmed and under water. It’s not my finances, but my e-mail account that I want to purge.
I have had the same e-mail address for more than a decade.
In my younger years, I had a variety of email addresses — school addresses, work addresses, an address I put on all sorts of applications and forms, a spoof address, ones for my friends.
But 10 years ago, I purchased the original Android phone, the Dream, even moving to T-Mobile so I could have access to the phone through Vodaphone, T-Mobile’s European arm. The phone had a beta version of G-Mail installed and an account was required to set up the phone. Since the phone would notify me of a new message, I began to use that address. Since that time, my G-Mail account has been my primary email address and with the exception of work addresses, my only account.
The problem is that I use it for everything now. All of my shopping loyalty cards, memberships, sweepstakes entries, utilities, social media, etc. You would be surprised how many things require an e-mail account before you can move forward (I went to a brick and mortar store and had to give my e-mail address before I could buy pencils for my son).
When I got the phone and the account, I was excited that I received notification of every e-mail. Several times a day my phone would ping and the blue light would blink. Eagerly I would check the message and quickly respond if appropriate.
But the longer I had the phone and the address, the less excited I became for each message. Soon my occasional messages became hourly and then by the minute. The light flashed constantly.
I would have dozens of emails a day. I reset the spam filter in hopes it would eliminate unwanted emails. I created folders for work, school, church, kids so I could organize the messages.
It helped for a while, but the emails just kept coming.
I turned off the notifications. I would occasionally scroll through the messages to see if something important caught my eye. If I needed, I could scroll through the messages to find something important, but for the most part, I left it alone. I got to the point where I didn’t want to use the Google Calendar because it would remind me of my rising number of unread e-mails.
Recently, I decided I need to have access to my emails and my calendar. I didn’t want to fear opening my phone anymore.
I was going to take a thoughtful approach.
First, I would clean the unsolicited sale emails for everything from flowers to power washers, eye glasses to video rentals. (I hate Homage and Giordana’s Pizza the most as I get multiple solicitations daily)
Next, I would purge all of the emails offering advice for some hobby or activity I was or am involved with — running, coaching basketball, fantasy football, investing, etc.
I would clear all the devotionals I thought I wanted, but never opened. Then the daily journalism updates I thought I wanted, but never opened. The unopened Redskins updates. The unopened Redsox updates. The job leads. The education updates. The ‘Words of the Day,’ The church news. The updates from a wrestling group my friend used to be involved with and I can’t get off their list now.
I was going to clean it all, but check each message individually to make sure it didn’t have a name, phone number, address or information I need.
But when I saw that I had more than 36,000 unopened emails in my inbox, not including my Spam folder, the plan changed. For a bit, I actually contemplated creating an entire new G-Mail profile and hoping for the best. Instead, I started deleting, just deleting. First one at a time, then by the screenful. Even deleting indiscriminately, it takes a while to erase 36,000 emails when you can only do it 50 at a time. (I am sure there is some way to calculate who many times you would need to delete, but I assume only a NASA scientist can do that level of math.)
Following an afternoon long endeavor, my Inbox is relatively clean. It has 85 read emails but they are ones I do want to keep.
I striving to clean the folder several times a day so it doesn’t overwhelm me again.
I think I am doing a good job, but if you have any organizational tips, I’d love to hear them. Feel free to contact me at martin.andrew.cordell@gmail.com.
-Mac Cordell is a reporter for the Journal-Tribune.