Inbox

This from Richard Powers – my latest terrific author discovery: ‘He sat down to the email in that mix of buzz and dread that came from opening the inbox after too long. The last person north of the Yucatan to go online, he was now suffocating to death under instant communication. He flinched at the message count. He’d spend the rest of the evening just digging out. And yet, some ten-year-old in him still thrilled at diving into the day’s mail sack, as if it might yet hold a prize from a contest he’d forgotten having entered’.

Couldn’t have put in better myself. This novel, The Echo Maker, is set in 2002, so we’re a good decade on from then and the protagonist in this gripping tale would barely recognise the new layers of instant communication that have evolved in that time.

Blog, facebook and twitter aside, though, email still seems to be the main form of communication for the middle-aged, especially for work. It’s certainly mine, and just like Power’s character, I have a love-hate relationship with the thing.

In some ways it’s the bane of my life. Suffocating to death is exactly the feeling when I arrive at work and see the long list of messages bolded to indicate that they haven’t been opened. And it’s not as though most of them are rubbish or cc’s either. Admittedly, this is the busiest time of year for me, three weeks out from the big conference I project manage, but I cannot afford to miss one little email or I will let somebody down. Well, that’s how it feels anyway.

How do you tackle them? This is how I do it. First, I put them in alphabetical order and check all the ones that come from my boss to see if they need instant action. Then I put them back in order of arrival and work through, putting that little red flag on all the ones I need to attend to. Which is a joke – my inbox has dozens of little red flags, some dating back weeks.

My office buddy regularly gets her inbox almost down to empty – two, three messages. I’ve never managed that in my life – if I can get below 150, I’m pretty pleased with myself. I file emails obsessively – my list of files stretches into the hundreds, but still the inbox fills relentlessly with things demanding my attention. Some days, even if I am frantic to complete tasks, I sit and work doggedly through the three or four hundred emails in my in box, which never fails gives me renewed energy to tackle the work that needs doing. It’s the virtual equivalent of sorting my desk.

Despite the despair that emails often evoke in me (and I do sometimes try and remember how we worked before their invention but the memory is lost in the mists of time) I also love them. Some ten-year-old in me still dives into the day’s mail sack, as if it might yet hold a prize from a contest I’d forgotten having entered.

Maybe it’s a writer thing. In 1995, we didn’t have email; the physical mailbox was the thing. That year, I had a call to Damascus experience that convinced me I was put on this earth to write; I produced my first short story ever for The Age competition, and truly believed (this is embarrassing) that I would win and go from there. Almost 20 years later, of course, I am still waiting for so much as an honourable mention in The Age short story competition.

But anyway, back then, I would watch the mailbox like a hawk, longing for the arrival of the postie. I put in for competitions constantly, before I learned they were pretty much a waste of time; I sent articles to papers and magazines, and waited for the editor to send me an ecstatic letter in the post.

Once I got email, I realised this was a drug that could be fed more than once a day. I could check my in box all the time, just waiting for that magic message to pop up telling me that my writing was the best thing some perceptive editor or publisher had seen in a long time.

In sixteen years of checking emails, that’s never quite happened, although I have received some truly wonderful, moving cyber messages that I have printed out and will most likely keep forever. So why, like a pathetic, intellectually impaired Pavlov’s dog, do I keep salivating every time I sit down after a day away, to check my inbox?

The fact that email surprises (well, nice ones) are few and far between, never quite dints my enthusiastic expectation. Which may say something about how dim I am, or may just indicate that I am an eternal optimist, who still believes, like most writers, that one day I will get that lucky break.

Meanwhile, I’ll keep sending novel manuscripts off to stonyhearted publishers, and entries to The Age short story competition, with a frail hope that simply refuses to die.