Cleaning My Email for the First Time in Years
It’s interesting what rearranging your email in descending order can teach someone about themselves.
Tonight’s random discovery: Keith has over 6,000 non-archived emails that, besides probably one-thousand, I have no working memory of what they are.
So, for me, I apparently went on a gmail cleanse through 2007. What about my undergraduate records? No idea.
But lessons to be learned:
(1) While I’ve managed to alienate a number of good friends in the intervening years, I still have some left. I even still correspond with someone I met senior year in high school; for me, this is shocking. Bonus points if anyone can guess who this mystery person is.
(2) There are a lot of people I owe thank you’s too; my last six years seem to have been consumed by (a) desperate job searching, (b) bitching about campaign jobs, (c) bitching about law school. What’s amusing about this trajectory is that I might just repeat it.
(3) A lot of times an apology email would have been good to send. (Well, I’ve done one—is that a step forward?)
(4) A lot of now-painful photographs, that I will nevertheless keep. But lesson: if you keep emailed photos in your inbox long enough, it will come back to bite.
(5) Follow-Up on (4): My love-life most resembles a patch-work of intermittently streams battling for dominance; long arcs of ill-fated attempts superficial consistency strangling everything from deliriously hilarious one-night stands to—God forbid—stable relationships; and, with periods I don’t care to measure, of the steady sound of silence.
(6) Query: Should I post said photographs?
(7) I need to get less dreary; and actually start doing the things that make me feel refreshed; but my nagging sense and reality of underachievedness has taken away some nice opportunities. In any case, as the saying goes: ’Keep Calm, Carry On.’ And Carry as Much as You Can.’
(8) Lesson to be leaned: With those people you care about: tell them; don’t hurt them; and, if you do, do everything you can settle the ground; if not, your phone’s silence will just constantly remind you of the conversations you could be having.
(9) Obvious, but important point: My parents really loves me, and I’m lucky we’re all at points where we all just like hanging out. And the idea of that going away is, obviously, horrifying.
(10) I can be pretty funny; but way too weird.
(11) I need to proof-read better—as a surprising numbers of these very emails say.
(12) I miss being at WASH meetings, and I regret never giving that mythical second literary presentation.
(13) Most importantly, I’ve survived and am still here to reflect and (perhaps) even improve.
(14) I do fear, indeed, I was more creative and passionate in 2006-07 than 2010. I’ll work on this for the brief reminder of 2011.
