You've Got Mail

My name is Caroline and I am an email addict.
In the time it took me to write that, about five million emails went whizzing around the world. It’s reckoned that about 210 billion are sent every single day. And even though many of them are offers for penile extension and requests from made-up banks, a very large number are genuine.
Rather too many of them are probably mine.
It’s hard to remember what life was like before email. I work from home and on the rare days when my program is ‘down’, I’m like one of those lions pacing around its cage at the zoo. I live on a quiet road and the ping of my inbox helps me feel in touch with the world outside. [My email doesn’t literally go ‘ping’. It doesn’t make any sound at all, but you get my drift]. Almost all my journalism commissions arrive via email and it’s the medium I use most to contact people in my job. I often set up interviews by email and sometimes even get to DO the interview by email, thereby by-passing the phone entirely. That means no transcribing of the conversation and a clear record of what was said for all concerned. Result!
I also love email as a means of keeping in touch with friends, from the ones that live just down the road, to the one who live thousands of miles away in different time zones. The great thing about this medium is that you can reply at your leisure, unlike phone calls that happen when your child is decorating the bathroom with their bottle of Matey bubblebath, or when you’re late for an appointment, or just can’t be fagged to speak right now. Sure, an answering machine serves that purpose too, but ‘screening’ calls always feels just a little bit furtive.
And yet…I’m wondering whether this need for control when it comes to communication is necessarily a good thing. I’ve become uncomfortably aware lately that I would almost always rather send an email than pick up a phone. I’ve always found it much easier to write about my feelings than say them out loud, and my email addiction feeds into this. Where will it end? I have visions of myself as a wizened old lady, tap-tapping away on my keyboard with my gnarled fingers while tumbleweed blows through my house and feral cats scavenge for scraps under my desk.
Then there’s the whole ‘watched pot’ problem. I have a handful of submissions to agents out there right now, all of whom are overwhelmingly likely to get back to me my email. Let’s just say I’m visiting my inbox at a rate that went beyond healthy quite some time ago.
So something must be done. I’m thinking of having a day soon where I switch off my modem from dawn to dusk. I’ll probably crack within the first 20 minutes but I’d like to know whether I’m made of strong enough stuff.
I’m going to call it National No-mail Day.
Anyone else out there care to join me and reduce that 210 billion?