The Empty Inbox

From an electronic standpoint, my email inbox can give me a fairly good idea of how long I'm going to be sitting here at the computer working on things in a given day.  The way I work with my inbox is if it's not done, it sits in the inbox and looks at me and annoys me until I get whatever it is accomplished. 

And as such, I hate a full inbox.  The more mail there, the more work to do.  There are the read, file or delete emails.  There are the junk emails, but there is always a percentage of emails that require action to be taken.

Maybe that action is just a response email.  Maybe it's doing lots of research, writing something detailed or planning out something for some time before I can remove the item from my inbox.   It's nice to see only a few items left in my inbox, but those few items might be large time suck commitments I've been putting off until the end.

But once I get through everything, once I've "bounced" every email response back to the sender, I love sitting there looking at my very empty inbox.  It's such a nice feeling I've been known to turn to my husband, who sits at the desk beside me and point to my inbox (a boring window on my screen) and say, "look, it's empty."  I think he tries to look impressed, or excited for me, or happy. 

It's a big relaxing moment to know there's nothing that I'm behind on in e-land.  I've been known to sit there and look at the empty inbox and even press the refresh button to make sure no new "work" has come in.  This sounds pathetic, doesn't it?

My inbox is most definitely not empty today.  So I'm signing off here and heading back to whack away at the ever-growing inbox.

The Big Boy Update:  Heh burr kop pher.  Children don't have filters built in when they're born.  They hear everything and see everything until they learn to distinguish what's important and what can be ignored.  For instance, I don't hear planes flying overhead as they don't affect me in any way.  He hears them all.  This morning while eating breakfast he said, "heh burr cop pher" several times.  I didn't know what he meant.  He told me, "outside"  Then he pointed upwards and made the flying motion with his hand. Oh, helicopter!  My husband walked in shortly after that and told me they'd been working on that word lately.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Ta da!  Her teacher told me that not only does she say "uh oh" when she's doing work, she says, "ta da" when she's completed something.  Thinking back now, I can hear her saying something like, "dah dah" with an air of accomplishment as she's working with something.

Fitness Update:  5.5 miles.  Still mostly dark.  Not as cold though.  That was nice.

Someone Once Said:  Heredity isn’t everything; You’re an individual. You aren’t your parents. You’re not your father, you are not your mother. So be yourself and have the courage to make your own mess of your life.