Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Freed from the chains of e-mail

I recently was persuaded by my husband to switch to faster Internet service through Qwest. This would require me to give up my dear ISP of several years. This, of course, meant changing email addresses after all this time. At first, I fought. But I swear sometimes I felt like we were using DIAL-UP! I finally relented and agreed to switch, but not without acting very dramatic.

I had a lot of email addresses. A work one, three home ones, two yahoos, two gmails ...
I never use the yahoos or gmails. They are mostly for signups -- like when you join a group that uses a board that requires a yahoo email. I had one that had my name and one that had a silly name in case I didn't want people to know my real name, for example on Freecycle. Who knows what kind of crazies are out there.

What I discovered was how freeing it could be to consolidate the email addresses. Now I have one work, one personal. I do have the yahoos for Freecycle and my Etsy street team boards. I am going to get rid of the gmail ones that I've never used. I also found it to be a nice time for housecleaning. All those annoying places that send you ads every week because you bought something once upon a time -- gone! They don't know where to find me.

I used to obsessively check my email from work. All four of the regularly used ones. All the time. I knew I wouldn't have a message because I'd just checked 3 minutes ago, but I'd still just keep checking it. Now, my firewall blocks my Web mail, so I can't check my personal email at all. (Mostly all I get at work is spam, anyway.) I freaked at first, of course, but to be honest, it's so very liberating. People can wait a few hours for a reply. Maybe they can wait until tomorrow even! Imagine.

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