I'm being followed and there's nothing I can do to escape. My pursuer is clever, a stealthy camouflage master who stalks me wherever I go. Nowhere is safe. My stalker creeps through the stacks, pops up unexpectedly in classes and appears in my room late at night.
This predator is everywhere; in fact you've probably seen him. I'm not his only target; he follows a lot of people. His name is Gmail.
I used to feel a little heckled when I had one e-mail account, but now I have two and I feel downright harassed. Messages come in at all hours of the day and night. Subject lines filled with all capital letters demand my attention, and spam hides out among my legitimate e-mails trying to trick me into reading it. Updates from all the CIOs I signed up for first year pile in around jokes from friends and reminders from my professors.
The trouble is I can't do anything about this harassment. Apart from the fact that there is nowhere to report it - from a legal standpoint it is fairly hard to accuse an intangible electronic force of stalking - I can't break free of my e-mail accounts because I am too dependent on them.
I go through periods during which I may become addicted to my e-mail or times when I am just annoyed with it, but no matter which situation I'm in, I have no recourse. Ignoring my account for even a day is dangerous. It is likely to take revenge by filling up with important information and messages that require timely replies.
So what's the solution? How do I break free of this dependence without falling into a dark place, uninformed by Collab notifications and ignorant of the latest hilarious YouTube video? Well, I haven't really figured that out yet, but I've considered several possibilities.
I could revert to snail mail. There is something romantic about the idea of receiving handwritten letters, or at least there is until I think about the crushing mountain of paper that would be waiting outside my door every day. This is probably not an especially environmentally friendly solution either, and the thought of all the paper cuts alone is reason enough to take standard postal service off the list.
I could set aside a certain time every day to check my e-mail. Then I could contain its stalking capacity to a few hours. This solution is tempting, but we all know that I'm never going to do it. I hate and am addicted to my accounts in equal measure, so the idea of abandoning them for the majority of the day makes me anxious. What if I am waiting for an important response, or I miss out on a job opportunity because I was a few hours too late in responding? Nope, I definitely can't try this solution. I'm starting to hyperventilate just thinking about all the extra hours that messages would be piling up unknown and unchecked in my inbox.
I could hire a secretary, someone to read all the messages and summarize the important stuff for me. Oh wait - I'm in college, I don't have a real job, and people might think I was a little weird if they saw me sitting in Alderman Caf
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