Absolute Zero

My husband has a little red bubble on his phone with a number in it that is higher than fifty thousand. I think the number is so big now that the email icon refuses to display the whole thing, and instead just gives him three dots. As in, ... we guess you are NEVER going to read your email, and you clearly aren't bothered by the gravity of this number.

I, on the other hand, had to turn my little red bubbles off.

Here's the thing.

Email is obtrusive, manipulative, and traumatic.

Some of the worst things I've ever had to deal with manifested via electronic mail. Tell me I'm not the only one: The inbox opens and the "From:" subject line gives your nervous system an instant shock. Something is there, waiting on the other side. Waiting for you to read it, to respond to it, to digest it. You've just been force-fed a problem or a criticism or an update you didn't ask for.

I've gone through a few periods in life where opening my email felt like walking in a forest littered with tripwires that triggered word bombs. Lines I read over and over again just to make sure the impact hit where intended; my responses carefully crafted and sent out like retaliatory air strikes.

Conversely, I've sent emails out into the void. It's always great when you get a response from someone you suspect is too important or too big to answer you. It inevitably stings when someone actually is too important or too big to reply.

Email can also be enlightening, celebratory, and anticipated.

Some of the best news I've ever gotten also landed in my INBOX. Acceptance letters, test results, doors opened to new opportunities and closed on old chapters. I keep these emails. Save them like love letters that someone might find someday. Evidence that something good happened. Something worth archiving.

In between all the chaotic bad and the elusive good is a ton of JUNK. Ads and bulletins and newsletters and gurus promising better returns and better jobs and better health and a better life. UGH.

All of it demands just enough attention to see if it's something before it's deemed nothing and removed from the queue. The fact that the world we live in requires this of me makes me irrationally furious. Some people, people like my husband, can happily ignore that box full of information waiting to be sorted. He's decided it's a challenge, and he wonders if maybe he can break the system. He doesn't look at his email unless he has to retrieve a third-party authorization code, and even then, he doesn't bother deleting it. It is this, and his ability to fall asleep within five seconds of intending to, that I envy the most in him.

I get busy and belligerent, so my inbox ebbs and flows between a few hundred and a few thousand unread emails each week. It's insane, the rate at which emails flow in, and that you have to be sitting in front of an electronic device for the majority of a day just to try to keep up. It's the way "organized" people spend time in lines, on hold, while on Zoom meetings, when you're supposed to be paying attention to something else.

The rate and manner in which we're required to process information these days is astounding; something that would completely shatter the mental health of our ancestors. We're all drowning in information, and I'm not so sure we're any better for it.

So, occasionally, on a really good day... a great day- I belly-flop into my sea of emails and swim through them like I'm Michael Phelps being chased by a shark. I delete, delete, delete, and archive. Delete, delete, delete, block, and archive. I make tasks I will never follow up on, to read the newsletters I'm actually interested in. I reply to people whom I've ghosted- sorry, this got buried... I revel in the click of the mouse as the numbers on the left side of my screen go down.

1342...

871...

388..

171...

0

It's pure bliss, if even for a moment.