Thursday, June 24, 2010

The E-mail Monster Within


*SIGH*

My email accounts are taking over my life!! How exactly does one person accumulate so many emails? It started out simply enough. When we first had internet access, I did what I was told and got an AOL email account.

Then I got annoyed paying AOL for email and started trying out other accounts that were free. This unleashed the email monster that had been lurking inside of me. I did not know I had an email monster, it just sort of happened.

A few years ago I was really active on several list groups, when my children were small and life was settled. I had a gmail account which I used exclusively for one very active list, and a gmail account I used for all the other lists. I also had a personal email account.

Then we started getting into a little financial difficulty with my husband's employer trying to keep their establishment afloat. They started cutting salaries, and they eventually laid everyone off (over 700 folks) and moved operations to Singapore. If our phone bill was late my emails went into cyberspace never to be retrieved. I started a personal gmail account. At least I could access that from the library!!

Then I got a blog. I have an email for Lily, and an email for the blog. At last count I manage 5 email accounts, which does not include the ones I've allowed to be ignored. How is it that one person could need to receive so much email?

At last look, Lily's email account has over 557 unread emails. My personal account has almost 200. I won't even go into the gmail accounts used for my listgroups, but I will say they make Lily look like she is on the ball!!

I think I need to simplify. On my To-Do list is going to have to be taming the email monster. Maybe I will do that this weekend while I'm at work. At one of my jobs I can sit on the computer and do things like catch up on email maintenance! How have you tamed your email monster?
When searching for the graphic, I came across this great article (where I swiped the graphic from, tyvm). Go read the article for tips on taming the email monster.

3 comments:

Melissa said...

Oh, I can definitely relate to this ... and if you have any tips on this, I can use some, too. I think there are close to 4,000 emails in my personal gmail account and another 1200 in the one I use for this blog. It's ridiculous.

Found you from the Book Blogger Hop and am very glad I did. Off to add you to my Google Reader and follow ...

Mary Bennett said...

I really don't know how I did it, but I did. I think my little medical foray kept me away from the computer enough that only my very tried and true friends remain.

So, nope, no advice, 'cause I certainly wouldn't recommend the way I did it.

Lily said...

((((Mary)))
I think I need to unsub to some of the newsletters I receive, and be more liberal with my delete button, on a daily basis.

By way of an update, I did indeed purge 2 of my accounts this weekend :)