Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2001-08-16 - 11:25 a.m.

E-vantages

It occurred to me today that electronic mail is so much faster, so much more efficient, that it enables us to spend a lot more time waiting for mail.

Think about snail mail (setting aside my personal feelings on the subject for a moment.) It comes once a day and never on Sundays. That's it. You mail something today, it's not getting there until at LEAST tomorrow, and if they wrote back the same day and ran it down to the post office, it would be three days from now before you could POSSIBLY get an answer. And there's no point checking more than once a day. The mail doesn't come until it comes, and once it comes for the day, that's it. It didn't come in today's mail, you can give up and get on with your day.

But e-mail is an envelope of a different color.

I wrote five minutes ago, so it should BE there by now. And you might answer right away, or in a few minutes. Or later today. Maybe tonight - you could answer tonight. After you get off work. After the kids go to bed. In the middle of the night. It could come in at any second. I'll check again. Nope, but some other stuff came in I can read. But your reply is coming, I know it is. I'll just see if it's there yet.

I have other stuff I need to do here, like some site maintenance for the writer's site, and a diaryland entry I'm working on. I'm not really waiting for e-mail. Hold on! - no, a few items from my Listserv. Okay. I'm going to get OUT of this chair now. But first I'll just see if...

E-mail enables me to spend HOURS waiting for a letter to come.

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I wrote a heartfelt e-mail response to someone. He didn't answer. So I wrote again, saying "I'd like to hear from you." He didn't answer.

Okay; that's fine. I can handle that; I am an adult. The best way to tell someone you'd prefer NOT to write to them is - NOT to write to them. Done.

Then I find out I have POSSIBLY sent the e-mails to the wrong address. That's funny.

Why is that funny? Because I now have to write and ask him if he GOT the other two e-mails. If he didn't, we're in the clear. But if he DID, then I have just sent THREE e-mails to someone who is politely trying to tell me he doesn't want to correspond, which would make me...let's see...lame.

This would NOT happen with snail mail. I wouldn't be lame enough to write even TWICE with snail mail, you know? No, really, I wouldn't.

Of course, if it were still a snail world, I would never have gotten his original letter, because it would be out in the garage on the floor, right?

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I have several e-mail accounts. Some are published and some I just give out. The important thing is, I have accounts that are "safe," meaning I can't get any letter-bombs about who I owe money or what task I said I'd do that I forgot to do. That's the mail I love to check. If there's stuff in that account, it's good stuff. The equivalent of handwritten letters.

One of the others is more like my snail mail. That's where the shit comes in. The oopses. The "Please advise status immediately" stuff. I have it set to download automatically as it comes in because I KNOW I won't click "receive" on that one very often.

Maybe I could tip my snail carrier to sort my stuff the same way. If it comes to "K. McCall" put it in the slot labeled "Good Mail." If it's "Ms. Kathleen McCall", it goes in the slot labeled "Important Stuff to Deal With." Yeah, the one right over the trash can, there.

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I just got a reply. He never got the original two e-mails I sent. He thought I was doing the electronic silence freeze-out. So I'm re-mailing the two original e-mails.

And I don't feel so lame now.

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