Inbox Zero

How to delete 15,000 emails without even trying. But crying.....

NOTE: I originally published this piece some time ago and it has been my most read substack I’ve ever published. In my mind, it might be the best thing I’ve ever written. I pulled it from here for a long while because it was difficult having something so raw out there. But it’s time. So forgive me if you’ve read this before. What follows is the original unaltered post.

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I was tired of constant reminders from outlook that my storage was full. And definitely tired of the number in my email folder that read 15,000+ emails. It was time.

I’d been hesitant to do this. Deleting emails can be dangerous. What if you accidentally delete something important? Gone forever. And that means taking the time to read through them. All fifteen thousand. It’s not an easy task. But I’ve been on a kick to just eliminate the nagging things that bother me lately, and this was one of them. So how do we eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

The best way to delete your emails is to start at the back and work your way forward. This way you can make sure to inspect them as you go and not miss anything. And so I began. I started my primary email address back in 2013, ironically because my previous inbox had gotten too full and I needed a fresh start. Of course, starting in 2013 meant there would be a ticking time clock in my head as I moved forward. I’ll try to narrate.

2013 and we’re living in Kansas. A happy little family. Lots of emails to family. Doctors appointments. Check and gone. Updates for a vacation to the Virgin Islands. Cool. Delete. Moving into 2014 and I know what’s coming.

We’re back in Florida now. But me, not for long. The tone of the emails changes from updates on new schools in Orlando to questions about where I’m going to live now that my services as husband are no longer required. Emails about custody. Pictures of the boys as I decided to relocate back to Kansas to finish my master’s degree and I guess go on to graduate school.

I delete most of these emails, saving a few that are relevant. All pictures of the boys are sent immediately to the cloud. We’re beginning a three-year stretch which I refer to in my mind as the “lost years,” when I was in either Kansas or Minnesota for grad school, seeing the fellas in person only every six weeks or so. To her credit, the boys’ mom sends lots of pics. I facetime every night at 7pm, as I do to this day.

My dad dies in May 2015. I’m living with my friends Levi and Lynette now, staying in their daughter’s toyroom. They never asked me for a thing. God bless them for that. New emails from family members I’ve never met. I haven’t seen my dad in ten years thanks to his alcoholism but lucky me, I’m the next of kin and they want what little he left in this world. I do not go to the funeral.

I got into graduate school! The first place to accept me is the last place I applied—the University of Minnesota. I also get accepted to Oklahoma and Florida State. Waitlisted at Michigan (my dream school). Rejected at Virginia, North Carolina, and my dark horse, Georgia (really?). I ultimately choose Minnesota. I liked the students most at Oklahoma, the culture at Florida State, but Minnesota felt like it would be the hardest. At it was farthest away from my soon-to-be-ex-wife and kids, and I felt like it would serve as penance.

Lots of emails getting set up in Minneapolis. Meet my new roommate. Get on Bumble to start dating. Get off Bumble. Survive.

April 7, 2016. Me to the boy’s mom: “Nunu died today. I'll tell the boys, but please call me so we can figure out the best way to do so.” Seems that marriages and fathers aren’t the only things that die around here. So does my 15 year-old-cat. She was staying with my mom. Mom called when I was in class that day. I excused myself from my Atlantic World seminar, took the elevator down 12 floors and facetimed in with the vet as she went to sleep. Then I cried real hard and went back to class to talk about sugarcane production in 17th century Puerto Rico.

2017. I’m going to Chicago it seems, on a fellowship to the Newberry Library. I’m studying Spanish paleography, which is a stretch because my Spanish is mierde, but I got accepted anyway. I can’t afford to stay there, but my friend Daniel’s mom graciously offers me a room at her place for my duration. Wonderful woman. I owe her a bunch.

But I’m also applying for jobs. My email is flooded with rejection letters. Hundreds. In the early days of my divorce I’d applied for everything I could find in a desperate attempt to stay close to the boys. Nothing. There was one position at a high school in Boca Raton in 2016. I was going to take it. And then I didn’t. But I did eventually find a job at a public high school that would allow me to move near the boys. It would slow down my progress on my dissertation, but I could be near them. I took it. For $34,000 per year. I’d still have to take student loans to survive.

Apparently I started reading Heather Richardson somewhere along the way. Wonder how that would work out.

But twitter was a pathway to other things too. I meet a Librarian online. She’s cute. Stunning. Awkward. Brilliant. In Denver. We fall madly in love and the emails are an archive of this. The last is where we talked about getting married. It was in 2020. I’d never see her again.

Dreams die too.

Saidiya Hartman writes about the violence of the archive. How what you there find can challenge you on a personal level. I remember in graduate school scoffing at this notion.

Challenging too, is sifting through all the bulk traffic in my inbox. Marketers, promotions. Delete. Ooh, there’s an offer to work for the Seminole Tribe of Florida. Accept.

Life moves on.

I meet someone else. Feel love in the heart in the way that surprise me because I’d sworn them off. This one I don’t talk about. Keep her close to the chest. Small problem: she doesn’t love me back. Hurts when I lose her too. But I suppose I never had her to begin with.

I keep the momentos. Emails about plane reservations to places I’d go. Texas with my buddies Chris and Eric. Maine to share a Coke with Heather. Prague to spend time alone.

New jobs. New relationships. New travels. Saving and deleting the whole way. I think ulimately my time-traveling experience took me about four hours to complete. Well, I say complete, but we know it is not. The email archive continues to grow and change, much in the way that we all do. We choose what goes. And what stays.