Why is keeping up with e-mail, mail, and voice messages such work for me?  Last night I spent about 3 hours getting my personal e-mail account (my main one, I have about 3) cleaned out, organized and delete, delete, delete.  I thought that about 6 months ago I deleted out all the mean hateful e-mails that a person had been sending me for several months last year, but I found some more.  It feels so good to get that kind of bad stuff out of my e-mail box.  In fact, it just feels good to get my e-mail box up-to-date with zero unread messages.  I will be diligent the next few days, maybe even weeks keeping up with the onslaught of offers for deals, and funny e-mails that are sent to me religiously by some of my friends, and then, little by little the number of unread emails will start to increase again.

Same with mail and voice mail messages.  I basically keep my home phone number just so I don't have to talk to people.  Anybody that is my friend calls me on my cell number.  I have registered on every do not call list but I still get at least one unwelcome call per day.  On the rare occasion when I have forgotten to pay a bill, my home number is the number they call.  Doctor's offices also use that number to call and remind me of appointments.  People that don't know me but call me to get me to do something for them call the number listed in the book.  I never listen to those voice mail messages but about once every 3 months, I just go in and delete them all out.  Then, I think I will keep up with them, and I might for a day or two and then before I know it, three months later, mailbox is full.

And then there is "real" mail.  When I think about mail, my reaction is to spew profanities, but I will resist.  I will say that I get about 2-3 pounds of mail daily and 99.9% of it is garbage.  I have all of my bills paid automagically every month and I have all of my statements set to e-statements when possible (part of the plethora of e-mails).  No one writes letters any more; maybe cards on special occasions.  For the most part though, mail is just garbage.  And it isn't just regular garbage.  No.  Most of it has to be shredded because I am worried that some random villain will pilfer through my garbage and find out the information that apparently everybody and their brother already has access to.  I don't ever go check the mailbox unless I am expecting something.  (Probably something I ordered late night during a sleep deprivation episode about mid-way through an on-call week.  When I am too tired to think clearly but not too tired to sleep through the continuous pages).  Anyway, I go for periods of not checking the mail and the mailman told me one day, when he brought the contents of my over-flowing mailbox to my door that if I didn't start getting my mail he would just send it all back.  Well, I thought this was a most generous offer.  I could feel a smile spread across my face and my eyes light up as I gasped "Oh, that would be great!"

"GREAT?"  the mailman snapped back at me.

Ruh-roh.  I think I had the wrong reaction.