Over 18,000 emails in Archives.
Good grief, Charlie Brown!
Technology. I am not hopeless in the IT department but, too much of it is just a little beyond my grasp. I am trying to learn more about it in order to feel less out of control as I get older.
Control is important to all of us. We go through so much of our lives unconsciously in control. By that I mean we do not have to be really present with our minds to be more or less in control of the things that are happening around us. We can live our lives largely on Automatic Pilot. The food gets shopped for, cooked and the kitchen cleaned up again. We process our needs with regard to clothing: buying, storing, wearing, cleaning, maintaining and then hording or discarding as per our nature when we have finished with them. We DRIVE unconsciously, as I know is happening as vehicles speed through our village at over 40 instead of consciously respecting the 30 mph speed limit. And the list goes on…
Someone recently told me (thanks, Sue!) that we waste electricity when we keep old emails that are not really needed on our computers. It clogs up our machines, burns our money and burns the planet as well. Here’s a link to one of many articles on the internet about it now:
Did You Know Deleting Old Emails Helps The Planet – (remoovit.com)
But there is more to it than that . I sat down here at my desk on a mission to Clear Out The Junk. The computer Archives is a good place to have the emails we really need to keep but all of this stuff has needed to be gone through to make sure we don’t throw any “babies” out by mistake. As I go through I realize how many things I have signed up for, how much my “fantasy self” has attempted to define itself as I have found new things and ideas on the internet. There is also a LOT of stuff that, while relevant at the time, is now the digital equivalent of old newspapers. And because emails are small, only a few kilobytes on average, I have not bothered to clear it out as I go. The message pops up on my computer asking me, very politely, if I would like to Archive my old emails now and I just press yes! Thank you! Out of sight, out of mind.
As many of us are finding out now, digital clutter is just as bad as physical clutter and can be just as debilitating. It damages us at an energetic level. For me, both types of clutter represent procrastination. “I will sort it out tomorrow” is a well worn phrase for me. Well, these things just end up hanging around in our psyche and, quite literally, weigh us down. I am flat on the floor with an elephant sitting on top of me.
Back to those emails. Imagine having 18,000 bits of junk mail stacked in a room in your house that you have put off sorting and/or chucking out until “tomorrow”. It’s a disease! Hum…
Never mind. Today is the last day of February. The 1st of March always says SPRING to me no matter what is happening with the weather. The light levels are on the rise, the daffodils are springing out everywhere. I truly believe that the human instinct to Spring Clean is something we all share at some level. Acting on it and not putting things off until tomorrow can be a sort of salvation for mind, body and spirit.
I’m down to 8,000 old emails now in Archives. I will go get a cup of tea and just keep on deleting.
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Quotidian 