I Love Email, Don't You?

I love emailing and receiving emails. Ever since I started using email at work in the early eighties, I've loved it. I love the written word. I trust it. I don't trust verbal words nearly as much, unless they're from people I trust, like my wife Janet, our kids, family, the Baha'is etc. I don't trust most TV news analysts and pundits, although they're interesting.

I've always been a good reader and speller. When I was twelve or so mom bought a whole set of Britannica Encyclopedias. I rarely used the main set, but over months I read the fourteen Britannica Juniors cover to cover. Very interesting and informative. Now I get my knowledge again from family and friends, but also from NPR and the Baha'i Writings. I rarely read the newspaper, although I like that to and hope they can continue in their physical format (as well as digital). Acquiring knowledge is the most important thing a human can do -- education opens up everything life and the spirit have to offer. And I count religious education as equally important as the sciences. The two wings of a bird kinda thing. Without both wings the bird will never fly.

I use four email addresses on a daily basis now that I'm home and retired. Two for my businesses -- ABLiA Media Co. and RR Energy & IT Consulting, as well as two personal addresses -- all gmail accounts. Gmail is the best I've found at filtering out garbage and spam, and I've been using gmail for four years now. I had used AOL previously and that let horrendous amounts of spam throuh.

I recently discovered how to "select all" my daily emails, then unclick the ones I wanted to investigate or keep, and delete the rest. So much easier than deleting each one individually! All told, between all four accounts, I get 150 emails a day. But going thru them is fun, educational and interesting. To me anyway. And it only takes me fifteen minutes. Emails I respond to take a few moments longer, but not much.

I'm very selective about what I sign up for on email. I am subscribed to about 100 newsletters, reports, news feeds, government sites etc. Most of the emails I get every day for my business, in both IT and energy (like Computerworld, TechRepublic and Network World, plus all the major energy mags and orgs). I also subscribe to a few writing sites, like Writers and Writers Digest, which are excellent articles and blogs. I can scan the subject line and quickly delete those that aren't relative at the moment or potentially in the future. I unsubscribe those I get tired of deleting. My personal emails are very different. I have subscriptions to things like the daily Gallup surveys, Factcheck, Politifact and other informational and political services. I like to stay current in certain areas.

All of my subscriptions are free right now. I know that will end someday, but its great now.

On my main personal email, for example, I have over 100 file categories like "Family," "Baha'i" "Subscriptions," "Receipts" etc. They're very helpful for archiving things I want to keep or refer to.

So I love email, don't you?