Virtual Pack Rat

Well, a longtime literal pack rat, probably going back to the late 60s, early 70s. You know that feeling you get when your mother, and only your mother, calls you firmly by your formal, full (i.e. middle name included) name, that uh oh, what has she found out I've done pit in the stomach feeling? Well, the first time I remember experiencing that feeling was when my full name was catapulted out of our house and down the street where I was playing. I couldn't have been more than six or seven. I arrived, practically shaking, in my bedroom to find my mother pointing under my bed. There, gee, how did that happen, was a week's, maybe two, who knows, a month's?, worth of dirty clothes (I was still operating under the kid's belief in magic--throw it under the bed and it disappears; that was the minute magic ended for me). Ever since, I guess, I've kind of kept things lying around a bit. Not that I'll be on an episode of Hoarders or anything, but tidiness is not next to Dan-ness in my universe.

It's funny, though, how sometimes New Year's resolutions--the ones you actually keep to some degree--kind of gestate and just appear, rather than being mulled over and aggressively resolved. It seems like 2013 could, might, maybe, sure looks like it, be the year I become more cyber tidy. It started with my new job, a tutorial on all the possibilities of the joint's email system, and my own queasiness regarding my ability to handle the considerable organizational aspects of my job. Determined not to amass a few gigs worth of worthless old emails--as I have done everywhere else I've had an email account--I started from day one immediately deleting email that had no right to be preserved. A couple weeks into the gig, I must say I'm doing a good job of it, mostly because I'm appalled at how much electronic nonsense the modern organization generates. I read it, make a quick judgment about the missive's worth, and either delete it or leave it alone. Needless to say the knowledge of, and actual use of, email folders has made this new me possible. And although I don't really take any literal (as opposed to psychic) work home (yet), I have just brought a work lesson home with me. To wit: In the last two days, over about an hour and a half, maybe two hours, I have successfully weeded through my own personal email account that was nearing sixty pages of email (including 29! unread messages) accumulated over more than four years. Bingo, a couple dozen old messages moved to a "keep" folder (specificity is the gold standard of much good writing, but not so much when it comes to arranging email files) and the other several hundred kaput, gone, zapped. I feel like an after picture. Spry, lithe, sinewy. And what's more, I don't have to resolve to keep a tidy inbox from now on, because I know I will. Delete--who knew such an innocuous, semi-pejorative word would become such a godsend one in this new world of ours--a man's best friend. Too bad one can't simply scroll, check, and delete a lifetime's worth of boxes of stuff. But it's a start.