I'm breaking my vow of bloggering silence, descending from my higher pursuits of basic survival, because my email has been down all day. I hate to admit this but I feel a loss of connection when I can't email. It's like I'm disconnected from what's going on in the world, especially at work (of course probably not much going on since it's my work email that's down). Still, I needed something, so I allowed a short foray into the blogosphere which got me thinking about "You call this progress?" by Seth Shostak where he states that "E-mail has become a steady drip of dubious prose, bad jokes and impatient requests."
That steady drip phrase really caught my eye--a steady drip, a drip line which reaches embarrassingly to the very core of me. Because of these dangers, I've had to set email vows too as it can get out of hand. I do not allow myself to check email after 8 or 9pm and if I happened to check it I will not open any email that may be upsetting in any way (e.g. office politics, anything that smells of criticism, conference rejections, students I haven't seen for two weeks or who I chewed out...). So while I feel connection and have certainly connected with folks through email that I wouldn't have otherwise, I have to agree with Shostak when he says email is a "sure source of stress and anxiety." But I assume most of this anxiety is not connected to the genre of email itself--it's "built-in, insistent arrogance" as Shostak says--but rather because email is the portal to my various work projects, my students, and my social world.
But email can really consume me. And I think Shostak is right to insist that the "esthetic debilities" that we hear about too often in popular media are not the big threat: "rather it's the unstoppable proliferation." Yeah, I know that. Like when I try to set up a committee meeting and email out a couple of possible times and agenda items--later my box is filled with 20 emails some in chronological order, others coming in late, some chiming in without reading the sequence, all and all a tanglewood of prose, time/dates, and propositions. You'd think I'd just delete the mess but I don't--I mean someone has to go through these things, right?
As Shostak recounts, a friend of his confided that he couldn't afford to die because there's be no one to handle the pile up of emails--the drip, drip, drip...the horror of modern existence.
9 comments:
That IS a disturbing thought. I should put in my living will the edict to cancel my 4 (4!) email accounts. Still. I love my email. I'm glad to know others are equally obsessed. Perhaps I too will set up some rules. Only so that I can get even more excited to check my email and break them.
I like the idea of setting up rules, and I've made vows in the past--to not check it past nine, not check it on Sundays, etc. But I always break those vows. I feel like I'm online too much in general. Like right now. And now....and now. It must stop!
There's something wrong with our internet at home, so for most of Saturday and all of Sunday there was no internet connection. The horror! It was awful. I have to figure it out and get the situation rectified. I totally identify with your post, though. I have not articulated my e-mail rules, except to note that the panic I feel when I can't be wired is a little scary. It was good for me to be offline over the weekend, but it made me anxious.
I try not to check email in the evening and on weekends, but I often fail. This morning email is down, so I am freaking out. Even though I have a dozen things to do that don't require email, I feel that I can't do any of them until I've checked email. So I am reading blogs.
I share this addiction, too. I've successfully fought off the urge to get a cell phone again and I've vowed to never be texed, but I can't seem to break the email habit.
I wish I was unable to check my work account from home. I took a "sick" day to clean my house, I must be nesting, and have been tempted to check my work e-mail all day. I continue to tell my self what good would it do but add stress to my stress free "sick" day.
Yeah, it seems email has changed what it means to take a day off or take a sick day. Ah, the good ole days when sick one could solely occupy oneself with re-runs of Matlock.
Also, I tagged you--see my blog. Sorry--blame the nablopomo madness.
Without a doubt this is my Achilles tendon. If the e-mail isn't checked, at least, 2 times a day the sweats kick in, and withdrawl is physically painful.
Let's take bets... HOw long until there is an online e-mail rehabilitation program. "God give me the strength to accept the SPAM I cannot change. The courage to change my "ADDYS", and the wisdom to know the difference.." I see a niche building here.
How much can a rehab councilour charge?? Hmm...
Here is your advice for free... "Your parents (and Gore) are to blame." That is a 1,200 dollar value.
Travis
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