99,000 Emails In My Inbox, 99,000 Emails....

...Okay, so it's not 99,000 ... but it is 90,000. Seriously. 90,000 emails in my inbox. Somewhere along the line, I just forgot how to hit delete. I read the ones that are pertinent, and ignore the ones that aren't. Now, I'm not talking spam either. These are various newsletters and updates that I have at some point signed up for. But now, rather than get off their email list and eliminate future emails, I just ignore them which leads to 90,000 emails in my inbox.

Turns out this is a pretty good indicator of the rest of my life as well. Too much stuff in my car? Let's add some more to it. Laundry is done and folded? Let's leave it in the laundry basket and just get clothes from there. I already have 14 books checked out from the library? Let's put 14 more on hold.

I have somehow trapped myself in a vicious cycle wherein I am overwhelmed with stuff but unable to get out from under the stuff because I am so overwhelmed. I am not oblivious to what is around me; I just ignore it because that is so much easier than actually diving in and doing something about it. Yes, I know I would feel so much better, so much lighter if I just got rid of stuff. It sounds so easy when I say it, but in reality, it's really not so easy. If you're standing next to a mountain, it's pretty daunting to climb said mountain, but at least you can see where your feet need to go. If you're standing inside the mountain (just go with me on this), it's nowhere near as easy to climb up. That's how I feel: trapped and overwhelmed and exhausted before I even start.

Today, as I was joking about how many emails I have, I realized it actually isn't very funny. Important emails get lost, get overlooked. Deadlines go by and opportunities are missed. And so I decided to whittle down my email inbox. To the vast majority of people, this may seem like a frivolous venture, a silly way to start, but to me, it's kind of a big deal. I am hoping that I will feel so much better about my inbox that I will want to whittle down other aspects of my life: the clutter in my car, the clutter in my house, the clutter in my body.

The tricky part to this will be how long it could take. It will not be an overnight process, and I desperately want it to be an overnight process. So I will have to push through the times when all I want to do is ignore the emails and forget about the delete button. I have to believe vicious cycles can be broken, so time to break mine.