My information superhighway is experiencing a traffic jam. Okay, traffic jam is too gracious a term – really it is gridlock – nothing is moving except perhaps some choice fingers.  As I type this my two email accounts collectively hold more than 1,200 unread emails.  Yes, more than 1,200 UNREAD emails.  Those unread emails represent about one third of the emails I have retained for some reason or another in my Inbox (I won’t even get into the number of emails I have stored away in files in these accounts – but suffice to say stored emails are represented by a five digit number).  It is madness I tell you!

I am not entirely sure when the snowball of emails ran me over and became a force that only the strong of heart and stomach could deal with, but I am pretty sure it happened around the time I exceeded the 500 unread emails mark.  Once I get to that large a number of unread emails, the task of sitting down and going through them all seems daunting.  I have never been this far behind before.  I attribute the huge pile, in part, to three weeks of back-to-back commitments that absorbed a lot of my time; but, to be fair, equally as culpable has been my "it’s summer" attitude which has resulted in a decidedly more lackadaisical view of email response times. 

Now that I am buried in email, I am at the point where I would just like to go into the witness protection program, assume a new identity and start all over from scratch.  Unfortunately, the Department of Justice does not view my situation to be as dire as I do.  I guess I could just delete them all and start from scratch, but as a half-Catholic, half-Jewish girl (hence twice the guilt), I struggle with that option.

So I decided today that I was going to have to come up with a strategy to not only stem the email tide, but also to methodically move through the pile. I figured if I could just address 100 of these emails a day I could deal with the pile in roughly two weeks.  That seems like a do-able approach.  100 emails – each maybe will take a few minutes to address – so maybe 300 minutes a day for two weeks and I’ll be able to clear up the gridlock.  300 minutes – five hours a day – of course, my typing skills are abysmally slow, so perhaps it will be more like six or seven hours a day.  Then there is the ongoing influx of new emails to consider as well…that usually is about 100 a day between my two accounts – yeah, that may increase the time required as well.  Gee, this may be more difficult than I thought. 

Does anyone out there have a connection with the Department of Justice – I could use a favor – if you have an "in" there shoot me an email will you?  😉

Day three hundred and sixty-eight of the new forty – obla di obla da

Ms. C