Hi, friends. A lot’s been going on here but also a lot of waiting, too. And so today I want to talk about waiting via email, which is a special kind of hell, it seems.
Does this sound familiar? You’re waiting to hear news about something and so every time your computer pings with the sound of love (what is getting an email but confirmation that someone, for a least a second, took time to acknowledge you’re alive?)—every time you hear that ping you go racing to your computer only to see Prose hair products pointing you to some video of a woman who has the time and wherewithal to dunk her head into a bucket of water and gently scrunch her hair into the kind of curls that say I am vibrant, I am independently wealthy, I am definitely not a single mom with four jobs. Cue the shiny teeth!
To combat the problem of red herring email pings, I spend a good deal of time unsubscribing from newsletters. And setting up VIP lists so that the email I am waiting for will sound different from all the other pedestrian emails I get a day (Hi, Landyn Craft, you scammer, you; Hi, Wonder, your food is overrated and too expensive). Problem is that I have too many VIP lists because there are too many people I’m waiting on and so in the end, the VIP list just becomes a “people I know” list and my inbox becomes a Spam Swamp.
So maybe the problem that needs addressing is my relationship to hope and email as its object. Right now, I can think of at least seven people I’m waiting on responses from, which maybe means actually my problem is that I have too much going on. Or, OR, that I’ve just diversified hope so that disappointment in one department can be offset with success in another, though this is a risky strategy given the chance I could be disappointed in all departments.
Do other people think this much about stuff like this? Am I all alone in the world? Why don’t you EMAIL ME the answer.