926 Emails

Greetings Dear Reader,

I returned to my teaching job after a wonderful seventeen day vacation.  I was blessed to spend a great deal of time with my children and perusing the things I love to do.  My routine is very simple when I arrive at work.

First I check voice messages so the angry red light on my phone will go away.  I had one.  Then I log into my PC and check email.  I had 926.  Usually I have fifty or sixty in the morning if I have departed before evening classes are over.  I receive about seven emails daily from a technology site to which I subscribe.  Internal emails from the Dean and Director are there. Students know this is the best way to get their needs met.  Email is my primary form of absent communication at work.

Image by OCAL

When I was on vacation I did not check my email even once.  As I saw this ocean of emails I thought it would take my entire day to work through them and I had two classes to teach.  Having prepped for class and there still being an hour before class time I wadded into the flood.  After about a half hour I had the total number of emails that I had to attend to down to 185.  I was able to delete 741 of them as either beyond the time of their importance, advertising, or technology news that I also received at home and already read.

It caused me to ponder for the remainder of the day the vast amount of things that pass through my inbox that quickly become irrelevant.  I know that we use email as if it costs nothing.  That is not true.  Every email has a price tag.  When you include the hardware and software involved and when you consider the price of an Internet Service Provider it can be staggering.  When sending an email each one costs about twenty cents.  That means I deleted $148.20 worth of email without even reading it.

I work hard not to waste things.  I am intentional about reducing the amount of things I use and own.  I wonder collectively how much email is trashed daily just at my work.  In my efforts to be a good steward of all that I am given I need to even think about the email I use.  I will return to this topic later in the year but for now I want be more careful about what I consume and measure how I do.  Stewardship of what I am given applies even to technology.

Wishing you joy in the journey,

Aramis Thorn

Mat 13:52 So Jesus said to them, "That is why every writer who has become a disciple of Christ’s rule of the universe is like a home owner. He liberally hands out new and old things from his great treasure store."