I’m a stacker.
I take papers that I need to go through and stack them. I sometimes go through them in a timely manner, but more often than not I just thumb through them every few months and toss out the ones that don’t mean anything to me anymore.
I stack books I need to read. The pile gets so large I end up re-stacking–removing the “less than important” ones so that I can actually get to the ones I want to really read.
My Inbox is a huge stack. It’s like a giant TO DO list of people I need to talk to and stay in touch with. I looked at it the other day and it was huge. I had an email from 24 April 2006 that I still hadn’t replied to! So I decided to clean it up.
Now my Inbox is empty. Everything that needed to be responded to has been responded to. Everything that needed to be filed, has been filed. It feels… odd. I’ve never had an empty Inbox before. It’s like the kids are away at camp and the wife is visiting her folks.
Ping! Just got an email! That didn’t take long–19 minutes of emptiness. I guess my Inbox gets lonely, too.