KH COMMENTARY: You've Got (No) Mail

I'm being ignored by a technological device - my email to be exact. You know how there are some people who are rudimentally connected to their mobile phone? The type that must always have it on their person, or in their bag or on the bedside table and if it breaks or is lost or is simply left at home by accident, they become a nervous wreck and go to extreme lengths to have the situation rectified immediately?

That's what I'm like - but with my email account.

It's the first thing I check in the morning and it is systematically checked ever few minutes for the rest of the day. If something happens to my internet connection, I flip out like an addict unable to tap into their source. There's nothing I enjoy quite so much as seeing the Inbox link in bold, notifying me that I have emails waiting to be opened.  I feel important. I feel regarded. I feel busy. But when there's nothing, when the Inbox link remains in the same boring font, I become twitchy.

It's not like I'm sitting at home waiting for Viagra advertisements or newsletters from MyerOne. I'm sitting at home waiting for work. When you're a freelance writer and emailing is your one source of communication with the world beyond the four walls of your work space, having emails or not having emails is in direct relation to your work load and therefore, bank balance. Regular emails = busy and employed. No emails = bored and poor. And the longer you go without receiving any written communication, the more aware you become of all the money going out and the lack of money coming in.

But now my email obsession is contributing more anxiety to my life as it becomes the primary means of contact for more than just my freelancing work. As I am planning to travel overseas in June, I have been forced to look for temporary work in order to amp up the bank funds and email remains the primary means of contact for the agencies I have applied with. The less correspondance I receive, the less work I am being offered, the less money I am making and the less is being saved in my anorexic piggy bank.

Email has even invaded my overseas plans. As I have applied to work as a camp counsellor in the USA starting in June, the placement company I am using maintain all contact regarding my application through email correspondance. If they have any news to tell me, it will be via email. As I am currently waiting to hear from them about where in the USA I have been placed and at what camp, every day is like perching on the edge of your seat, waiting to find out whether you won the Academy Award. I can't speed up the process and I will only be notified once I have been accepted to a camp. I must simply sit and wait. In this circumstance, no news is not good news. No news means I haven't been placed. No news is bad. Very very bad.

So what do I do to feel more in control of these nauseating problems? I check my email like my life, and the lives of everybody else in the solar system, rely on it. I check it so often that if I had a dollar for every time I clicked the Inbox link, I could fund my overseas trip without ever having to work again.  

Essentially, I am in a destructive relationship with my email account, wherein, it takes as much as it likes and gives little back. And the more emails I send out in hope that I will reap responses in return, the greater my expectations become of my email and the more regularly I attempt to check it. It has become a love/hate existence. On good days, my email is a blessing. It bears good news or simply just news itself and I am left feeling satisfied by what it has offered. But on bad days, which can quickly slide into a bad week, it brings me nothing but disappointment. It doesn't bare anything and the inbox remains barren.

Technology sure makes for one selfish, illiterate boyfriend.

Ciao for now. xo

(Image Credit: Audrey Hepburn Complex)