I Deleted FIFTEEN THOUSAND EMAILS and other things I let go of in the last week of 2020 (Part 1)
Whew! What a ride the past year has been. I don't know about you, but I've had ups and downs and gratitude and grief and all the things in between. It's been a year to practice embodying agility, that's for sure.
Normally, near the end of the year, I start getting ridiculously excited about the new year. I normally LOVE the energy of a fresh start a new year brings and I love nothing more than settling in with my journal and my planners and some visioning tools and just immersing myself in the excitement of it all. I can't wait to start something new and choose a word or phrase for the year and make a vision board and basically #allthethings.
This year, December felt drastically different. If you follow me on Instagram (pretty much the only social platform I hang out on), you'll likely know that I've struggled hard over the last bit. When I stopped to actually think about it, it pained me to admit I've been in a state of mid-level burnout since the kids went back to school in September. I felt the contrast between "the great pause" and "back to almost-normal life" sharply and felt quite helpless to change anything since I felt we'd already cut back on everything we could. The kids are in less activities. I've gotten very choosy about my commitments. I felt like I should have "had it handled" better than I did.
Needless to say, December was my breaking point. On Boxing Day, I wrote in my journal, "I feel empty inside. I move between this emptiness and "okayness," but rarely into excitement or joy."
I'd noticed these feelings days before, but it wasn't until I wrote them on paper that I realized I had stepped out of the driver's seat of my life and was a walking victim to all the choices I'd been making over the past four months and I needed something to change. I NEEDED TO CHANGE SOMETHING.
I know I said this in my IG post the other day, but I'll say it again. Sometimes joy is hard-fought, and THAT IS OKAY.
Noticing my joylessness prompted a remembering for me. I've fought for my joy before. More than once, actually. And not only is that okay, I know that the result of my work and commitment to myself ALWAYS pays off in spades.
Once I realized I basically needed to get to work, I felt like I needed a word or a phrase to anchor myself. One night, sleepless because of maaaaaaaybe one too many shots of espresso, I thought, "Ah! The Great Reset!" Then, like every intelligent person does (haha) I googled it. Turns out The Great Reset is actually a proposal for economic reform in developed nations post-Covid. Who knew?!?! I sure didn't lol. My idea was good though. I needed to hit the reset button. I needed to give myself space to remember what I wanted and what I needed to start hearing my inner voice again, to feel inspired again, and to feel re-energized.
The first thing I did? I deleted the FOURTEEN THOUSAND and something UNREAD emails I had in my inbox dating back to 2017 and ANOTHER THOUSAND and something I'd read but never deleted. That damn notification bubble with the fourteen thousand in it has weighed on me FOREVER. Every. Single. Day. I looked at the notification and thought, "wow, I really need to delete some emails," and every single day for forever I put it off because it would be too time consuming. I'd attempted more than a few times to tackle it, but I'd delete a few thousand and then poop out on it and leave it to be finished another day. Recently my laptop has been giving me "out of application memory" error messages constantly and I've had to keep my email app closed just to be able to run my web-based programs. It took me way too long to realize it was *probably* becuase of the damn fifteen thousand emails sitting, downloaded, in my inbox!!!
I started waaaaaaaay back at the beginning where I had emails of RECIPES saved from 2014. I created a recipes to keep folder. I then deleted all but ONE of the recipes and filed that one in my new folder. Then, I worked in big chunks highlighting and deleting. I sort of paid attention, but mostly not. At this point I only really care about the 2020 tax years for invoices and documents. Everything from previous years should have been dealt with already and a copy should already be saved elsewhere. Cue deleting all. the. emails. up until 2020. Then I paid a bit more attention, moved a few important docs and invoices into their respective folders, and deleted until I was down to a single digit number. It wasn't enough though. I deleted old, full, unused folders full of emails and then went back and dealt with (either read, filed, deleted or unsubscribed from) the remaining emails until I was at INBOX ZERO. Like not even zero UNREAD messages. ZERO MESSAGES. I felt like I had won at life, and in a way, I had. I had stepped back into the driver's seat.
I hadn't intended to write a half-novel when I sat down to write today (shit happens lol), SO instead of blathering on for another how long with the rest of the things I let go of between Christmas and New Years, I'm going to call this a series and pop back in with Part 2 in a couple days! Maybe I'll be more concise then. Who knows, really? Maybe I'll have lots of wisdom to impart. You'll find out I guess!
I hope the first few days of 2021 have been kind to you. I'm rooting for you!
Love,