potemkin village. this is the problem i face when i sit down at the computer. should i email or internet surf? i know, big dilemma right? this is the type of stuff i must think about at two am. internet surfing (is there even a cool way to say this now? is surfing even in still?) is easy and takes no energy of any sort. you just click around, check blogs, check articles, read about something that interests you, go from link to link, vicariously learning and living. sounds very cabana boy-ish doesn't it? but then two hours later you are left with that deflating feeling of "man, i just wasted two hours of my life even if i just did learn all about voles and sleepwalking." there's probably a point when ninety five percent of additional knowledge is useless knowledge. i reached that point years ago.



now, i could be using those two hours to "productively" write emails to people. i could be composing long exciting emails to friends and sharing with them my life, my thoughts and my concerns. then tomorrow in the morning i can start the "when will they reply to me" thoughts. i have emails sitting in my inbox that i want to reply to -- like really really want to reply to -- but i just can't muster up the energy to. i mean, writing email takes work. you have to think about something to say as well as have the concentration level to not just throw up three line pieces of shit. if people wanted pieces of shit in their inbox they would just turn off the spam filter. so, writing email takes commitment, a department i'm sorely lacking in as you well know. so, i just let old email sit in my box for awhile, sometimes never replied to. i have a simple system for email replying: insta-reply, two day, one week, when i feel like it or am inspired. i find that when i'm at home and not at a job, the insta-reply category is all but extinct. nobody is an insta-reply, i just don't have that type of time anymore now that i'm unemployed.



i do always keep an unreplied email on my mind for many days/weeks/months. thinking of ways to answer it, when to answer it. for example, i have an email from my friend in new york, dated april twelfth of this year. it's seventy five words long and ends with the obligatory "how are things with you?" i don't know what to do with that line. if i had answered it two months ago i could have honestly answered it quickly. but now that two months have passed, i feel the need to reply with a somewhat detailed yet kind of vague exposition of how things are with me. so this email sits until i am ready to commit two hundred words to my friend, one of my favorite people in the world mind you.



let's go back to april third. i got a three hundred sixty four word, eight paragraph email from another friend. it's a real email. filled with stories and people's names and thoughts about life and love. i haven't had the strenght to tackle this particular email. i haven't even given it a chance really. i just think that this email can wait, even though i have composed dozens of much longer responses in the intervening two months. why does an inbox not work on an first in first out basis? because we are not accountants that is why. we prioritize and take into account when a reply is expected. at any one time i can only handle two people who get near insta-reply long email status and about five thoughtful albeit short correspondents. everyone else is just waiting their turn. this is not to seem like i get a lot of email. i get an average amount of it i'm sure and everyone faces this dilemma. but i thought i'd dramatically write about my email life since i can't choose who to email now and so i'm blogging. my friend did say "write when you get a chance," and i guess the chance just hasn't come up yet.



one more email note. when people end emails with "talk to you soon" or "see you soon", is it really just a way of signing off? the semi-committed good bye but not a "i've grown tired of writing you, bye." i mean, when i say things like "see you soon", and i've only seen a person one time like ever, is that even something correct to say? since the chances of you meeting anytime -- much less soon -- are very slim? should we be more honest and say "see you maybe later, talk to you maybe later."