THE E-MAIL MOUNTAIN: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Staring at an e-mail account, I realise I’ve been swamped. Swamped by a mountain of e-mail. Why I haven’t been mountained by a swamp of e-mail, I can’t say. I imagine that involves travelling to a swamp, where the internet reception is questionable and alligator incidents are high.
   There, a doughty mountain lands upon you with a mighty splash and lingering bubbles.
   Any alligators who can reach what’s left of you will have slim pickings. I could turn that into a movie reference by imagining the actor Slim Pickens waving his hat as he rides the plummeting mountain to an ill-fated rendezvous from the upper atmosphere to the depths of the bayou.
   But no.
   I am not truly swamped by e-mail. An e-mail comes in and I read it. I may even act as a result. There is no swamp-water rising over my digital hiking boots. Typically, I see a few e-mail notifications at a time. Occasionally, a company will send me six small e-mails at once instead of a medium one that would have covered the same boggy ground.
   If wild e-mail sources come in at the same time, and one is dropping six messages, I might have as many as a dozen to get through at once. That’s loads. Loads. Almost all e-mails are quick to deal with. So I am never truly swamped by messages. Unread messages? I read them. And that’s that. They are no longer unread, and the world sleeps peacefully through until dawn.
   Over the past while, though, and that’s a scientific term, past while, facts, bitches, I’ve been swamped by the stuff I’ve read. Yes, I have more than one e-mail address. There’s one for my YouTube channel. Another address is for most of the stuff I deal with. I keep an almost unused e-mail address for things I have to process once in that famous blue moon.
   And I have e-mail addresses that are back-up addresses for the main addresses, in case I need to change a password. If I see a password change request over in my reserve e-mail, I know I’m the one who made the request. Or, once in a grainy sickly moon, I see someone has typed my e-mail address by mistake and I’ve been sent a blip.
   Reminds me of the time I was subscribed to a service on the basis that the user typed my address into the website by mistake. As usual with things like that, you bypass the e-mail’s brief subject header, and go to the website and see if the company is legit. Of course, I couldn’t sign in. I didn’t know the password. But I knew a woman set up the account linked to my e-mail.
   Now I was getting company e-mails. The internet makes it easy to unsubscribe from those things. Except when it doesn’t. I had to navigate a non-existent account and the haunted internet country lanes of disinformation technology to be free of the spectre. One digital exorcism later, and I was fine. With one mighty click, I was free of an account I hadn’t set up.
   I doubt the woman concerned had a great online experience with the company. But I’d erased my connection to her account she couldn’t receive any messages to, so that’s a form of progress. Blips happen.
   The great spam net catches all the fraudsters. I no longer receive classic calls for help. You go to send the message to spam and accidentally open it instead. Oh no. My bank account was under threat. Not the same bank account at the top of the e-mail that was listed at the bottom of the e-mail. I think they wanted to look after my third bank account.
   Or the woman who met me somewhere, you remember, and saw me walking around her apartment. I think the fraudster meant to say she saw me walking around my apartment. Calm down, stalker-girl. Where did she see me, when I was meant to be casually walking around her apartment? Was she in it, sitting at her stylish breakfast bar, saying nothing. Refusing to question my presence in her abode?
   She was questioning that later, in the e-mail, looking to hook up with my bank account. I suspect she was a Russian named Ivan operating from an internet address in Paris. That’s usually how the trail goes. E-mail blips. Fraudsters. Genuine companies, with a dose of the internet shits, dropping six messages instead of one.
   I read or dismiss. Sometimes, I read and dismiss. But, damn it, lately I haven’t ERASED. That’s my problem today. A whole bunch of messages I’ve read…and dealt with, but not dealt with. Why leave messages in the in-box at all, after they are done? In the case of low-frequency communication, the e-mail doesn’t deserve its own folder…
   With that in mind, I could delete the e-mail after concluding business. True. But maybe, much later, I’ll need a handy reference. And there it sits. Could be time-sensitive…in the sense that it should sit there for a time and then be taken out behind the barn for a special picnic.
   I’m staring at a back-up e-mail address. There’s one e-mail in there, reminding me that I’ve associated a low-maintenance account with that particular e-mail address. And now I am staring at the main e-mail address I use. I am glaring at all of the e-mail accounts…
   Okay, some are just there for use in emergencies. If I forget a password for one, a message goes to the other. Whether used a lot or barely at all, I see I have e-mails that I’ve read. Nothing unread. I’m all over that action. Well. There’s the back-up account with an e-mail I’ve read…
   And there’s the main account where it’s all read, too. But I have this swirling pool of. Wait. Three messages just came in. All are…disposable. And all three are now…deleted. Easy, isn’t it. Except for the swirling pool of. Fuck. Yes, 317 messages. All read. Many waiting for the executioner’s block.
   How did I let it come to this? I didn’t. It was gremlins. Gremlins, under the stairs. They wait for night, and then strike as one hour chimes into the next…when the fabric of the universe lies at its weakest. Some say only the tiny mice, living in the spaces between raindrops, can battle those gremlins. Very tiny, suspiciously dry, mice, with anti-gremlin weapons. Every time an e-mail is deleted, a tiny mouse defeats an obnoxious gremlin. And the tiny mouse gains a pair of wings.
   Massive fuck-off red dragon wings. Mess with me, bitches! For the full effect, I guess you have to say that last bit in a squeaky voice. Unless you already possess a tiny mouse voice, in which case, squeak on. In the time it took me to type this far, I dealt with three messages.
   Incoming!
   My legs, my legs!
   Is there a doctor in the house?
   Why would these dead messages pile up? For a number of reasons. A month ago, I was at 200 messages and considered blogging about it back then. I foolishly thought to myself, self, but in a Boris Karloff sort of accent, self, I’ll have thrown them all in the incinerator by next week.
   And the e-mails, too.
   Yet here I am, one month on, and a hundred messages deeper. There are reasons. Some things are closed off, finished, in terms of e-mail exchange. But I’m waiting on a parcel. So the physical business has to close before I can go back and take a scythe to the overgrown field of reminders.
   I’ve sent a parcel and I am receiving a bunch of e-mails concerning that transaction. When I receive word that the parcel has reached its destination, the whole lot can go. When five or six things generate five or six messages, that’s a lot of digital nonsense hovering over the airport, waiting to land.
   Customer service items that are in their own infinite holding-pattern. Stuff that should be safe to delete, yet hasn’t quite reached the DELETE BY date. Let’s see how many of them can go. Absolutely, this used to be so much easier when it was so much easier.
   I’d look at a short list, see several finished e-mails had ripened in the sun, and send those packing. Now the ones that can go are hidden in a field full of others that should stay for now. Facing a list of twenty things, seven up for deletion, the reaper’s scythe fell swift and merciless.
   Now, I stare at a few in a field of many. Should they stay or should they go? Don’t delete the thing that wasn’t deleted for a reason. It’s still there for a reason. That’s the case with every e-mail there, now. How many more will come in as I type? I thought nailing duplicate files dead in an archive was an endless task.
   Waves crash upon the shore, and it is the job of these waves to crash a little more. I lift the scythe and slash without reprieve. Chop, and 317 messages don’t bite the dust. Some of them do. I’m down to 286. Weeding with a flamethrower should feel satisfying. But all I think about is the smell of napalm.
   I’m down to 149.