I am one of the 10% of the women (according to a Yahoo survey) who has 2000+ messages in their inbox and among one third of them who would rather clean their toilet than their inbox. No, I am not proud of this fact and only God knows why I have so much rubbish not just in my brain but in my Inbox too. (Wondering if a woman's personality, to certain extent, can be estimated/judged by the state of her Inbox? or Are all the women same, that is hopelessly unorganised with their Inbox or even love life for that matter, for some of us.)
This morning, as other mornings and other times of the days (midnights too and once in the middle of an interview), with best interest in my heart, I decided to springclean my Inbox. I thought, at least I can try and declutter something that is totally do-able and within my ability and doesn't require me to go through 26 poses of Bikram yoga at least(note: I don't practice Bikram Yoga). Now if I could possibly succeed in my mission is a totally different story but while in the process, I did come across old emails from my friends with whom I have lost contact these days. Before you shift the entire blame on me, I think I should defend myself here using the same old line, communication is a two way process. Pretty much like tango and of course it does take two, right?
I do understand there are circumstances and people do get caught up with the matters at hand. Physical absence and proximity are other major contributing factors. However moaning aside, I am much more amused at how the act of writing an email has in itself become so sacred and rare. (Sacred, mainly because its accessible and its presence acknowledged but somehow we don't seem to use it that often, maybe out of sheer respect for the act itself and the belief that it should be used sparsely).
With Twitter and Facebook and other social sites, writing to your friends has become just so easier. You can just write on their walls, you can go through their profiles and send a message in a spilt second. This very accessibility has made the act of writing to your friend, not a very big deal. You can write whenever,wherever to whoever (unlike the times when we used to write emails and had specific person in mind and write their email address and send an email to them) and we are finding it so much easier to do this that we are actually not doing it so often (maybe the complexities of the modern world has made us ignore the easier things in life and just run after challenges). The reverse effect, as I would like to call it.
These days if you ever see an email from your friends, its most likely a spam. And I am not even bothered to open when I see an email from a familiar email address. I know its a spam and hit the delete button most of the times. Few times, out of curiosity, thinking if my friends actually did decide to message me via their email addresses, when I open the message, I am proved wrong, almost instantly. So there goes my faith in emails sent by my friends or rather their email addresses.
Now, this might not be the case for everyone out there, but then again I am someone who has logged in their MSN mesesenger for as much as 3-4 times(in total) in 2 years' time. Now am I seriously being so disconnected to the internet because of the loss in the very faith of virtual networking or because there are so many options to choose from that I am overwhelmed to the point where I am happy rather not choosing any.
The dilemmas aside, it was great going through the old emails and things I've written to my friends about that particular point of time in my life. I would happily spring back to the days of emailing my friends again, hoping the emails won't be considered a spam and deleted straight away. Even worst, hope it doesn't get marked as junk.
Happy Springcleaning everyone!!! :)
P.S. Just for the record, I did manage to get my inbox messages to 1792 and I hope to maintain the number if not decrease it. ;)
