celebrating an empty inbox

[kareina]

Years ago I was such a good correspondent that I replied to all of the messages in my personal in-box on a daily basis and either deleted or filed every message promptly. An empty in-box was a normal state of being. Then I started that PhD project and a backlog started up. There have been a few occasions in the past 6 years when I actually managed to reply to everything and empty my personal in-box, but they are no where near as often as I would like, nor have I managed to keep it empty for long. Tonight, at long last, I managed to empty my in-box--this is the first time since moving to Sweden that I have done that, though I have gotten close a couple of times. It is such a good feeling.

I was most amused that the reaction of clovis_t to hearing that my in-box was empty was to send me an email saying "Mwahahaha, your inbox is no longer empty.". However, I replied to that one promptly, filed the letter, and it is once again restored to the pristine whiteness which is so dear to my heart. I think I like having an empty inbox almost as much as I like receiving email from friends, so I guess I win either way--either it is empty, or someone is sending me messages.

However, I must confess that this major accomplishment took most of the evening--time I could have been spending working on that paper. Sadly, I didn't even open the file today. I did some sewing, I read some fiction in Swedish, I went to my doctor's apt (can I add an aside how nice the health care system is in this country? Almost as soon as I had a Swedish Personal number I received a letter telling me that I have been booked for an appointment with "gynekologisk cellprovskontroll and giving me instructions as to how to change the appointment on line if the day or time didn't suit me. So no need to even book the appointment! They did charge me for it--a total of 150SEK (about €10.50)), and created a new email address on lord_kjar's server.

Why did I need yet another email address? It might be that I don't. But I found out from two different people that I didn't receive important, time-sensitive messages they had sent me recently, and there was no sign of the missing messages on gmail in the spam folder or in the in box, and they hadn't been downloaded by Eudora. Since the problem could be my address it was worth trying to create a new one. In the process of creating that address and telling Eudora how to find messages sent there I accidentally set the program to downloading over 200 messages sent to a long-defunct address. I have no idea how I accomplished this--my old sca.org address was discontinued by the SCA Inc ages ago. Once it ceased to exist I told Eudora not to bother trying to download those messages anymore, since it just gave error messages whenever it tried. I haven't attempted to download mail to that address in over a year, but somehow, tonight I managed it. Now, of those 200+ messages most of them were SPAM, but there turned out to be about 8 messages that were actually meant for me. I replied to all of them (explaining why it has taken so long to reply), and while I was at it started replying to other old messages which I have known about. Over six hours later my inbox was empty, but I had sent quite a few messages, so I rather expect new ones waiting for me when I wake in the morning. Perhaps I will actually reply to those promptly...