When one develops parts of their life around the Internet, abandoning said Internet leaves behind a mess. Like all messes, this one either has to be cleaned up, or severed from one's life with brutal finality and left alone and ignored completely.
I'm not a brutal severer. I have no wishes to disconnect myself from the three Ws eternally. Therefore I elected to start the cleaning process today.
Step one: plunge into my inboxes.
I have looked at and done something with approximately 500 emails today. I am frequently given to exaggeration, but in this moment I can truthfully and sadly say that I am not exaggerating. My neck is feeling enough pain to testify.
It wasn't all drudgery, though. I can confidently say I was amused today.
It seems about the time I went dark, a whole host of persons started thinking I merited them giving me something for free. In my Gmail account, I got a slew of messages offering me everything from money to iPads. Wow! People can be surprisingly generous. One woman, or what I assume was a woman, even said the generosity was a family affair. Apparently her "Cousin Lenny" was the one who really wanted me to have a prize and she was just acting as mediator.
My favorite message came from another woman who seemed to be feeling a greater sense of urgency than any of the others. She implored me, "Please have your iPad," not "You've won!" or "I would like to send you a free iPad." No, it was "please," as if she really wanted to say, "Take it off my hands, I don't want it, it's yours, get it out of my sight!" This one was also a family affair, because apparently this iPad was coming "courtesy" of one of her cousins too.
I might have been tempted to believe them if any of them could have spelled or used punctuation.
So no money or expensive high-tech gadgets for me. All I received were chuckles at the lengths people will go to get my address (every one of them (or perhaps a singular one under many guises) asked for it).
This kind of stuff happens on the Internet every day, and I know that. It's not unusual enough for me to post a blog on it. But the only reason I comment on it (aside from being grateful for a smile in the middle of an unpleasant chore) is because they were all in my Gmail account. In the years that I've used Gmail, this is the first time I've received messages as such to that account. And it wasn't just one or two. I was bombarbed by them. The latest of them came today, so it's continued to happen periodically over the last few months. And I'm intrigued by the fact that they didn't start until after I was unplugged. Hmm.
Getting back to cleaning, I'm happy that's done. I do still have some to work through, but only a handful, and I have identified all of them and know what I need to do with them after my neck and patience both get a break.
After email, I will move on to other things. Then, maybe sometime in the near future I will successfully be able to use the Internet again.
I'm not a brutal severer. I have no wishes to disconnect myself from the three Ws eternally. Therefore I elected to start the cleaning process today.
Step one: plunge into my inboxes.
I have looked at and done something with approximately 500 emails today. I am frequently given to exaggeration, but in this moment I can truthfully and sadly say that I am not exaggerating. My neck is feeling enough pain to testify.
It wasn't all drudgery, though. I can confidently say I was amused today.
It seems about the time I went dark, a whole host of persons started thinking I merited them giving me something for free. In my Gmail account, I got a slew of messages offering me everything from money to iPads. Wow! People can be surprisingly generous. One woman, or what I assume was a woman, even said the generosity was a family affair. Apparently her "Cousin Lenny" was the one who really wanted me to have a prize and she was just acting as mediator.
My favorite message came from another woman who seemed to be feeling a greater sense of urgency than any of the others. She implored me, "Please have your iPad," not "You've won!" or "I would like to send you a free iPad." No, it was "please," as if she really wanted to say, "Take it off my hands, I don't want it, it's yours, get it out of my sight!" This one was also a family affair, because apparently this iPad was coming "courtesy" of one of her cousins too.
I might have been tempted to believe them if any of them could have spelled or used punctuation.
So no money or expensive high-tech gadgets for me. All I received were chuckles at the lengths people will go to get my address (every one of them (or perhaps a singular one under many guises) asked for it).
This kind of stuff happens on the Internet every day, and I know that. It's not unusual enough for me to post a blog on it. But the only reason I comment on it (aside from being grateful for a smile in the middle of an unpleasant chore) is because they were all in my Gmail account. In the years that I've used Gmail, this is the first time I've received messages as such to that account. And it wasn't just one or two. I was bombarbed by them. The latest of them came today, so it's continued to happen periodically over the last few months. And I'm intrigued by the fact that they didn't start until after I was unplugged. Hmm.
Getting back to cleaning, I'm happy that's done. I do still have some to work through, but only a handful, and I have identified all of them and know what I need to do with them after my neck and patience both get a break.
After email, I will move on to other things. Then, maybe sometime in the near future I will successfully be able to use the Internet again.
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I like conversation. Your comments promote conversation. You know what to do. Vielen Dank.