Too Much of a Good Thing

It’s been a busy week. I flew home on Tuesday, well, arrived early Wednesday morning really. And it has been go go go ever since. All of a sudden it hit me that today was Friday and I realized as I was listening to my phone bing and bong with the arrival of emails that I hadn’t written my blog. As I scrolled through the just arrived emails, there wasn’t one that I wanted to open.

Remember when email used to be exciting? It was a new way to communicate. Instant, not as intrusive as a phone call and less formal than a letter. Most important, you wanted to read all the emails you got. They were from people you knew, organizations you belonged to, or a list you had joined. Your email address was private.

And then something happened. The number of emails showing up in my AOL account became like a fever dream. No matter how fast I deleted them, more kept showing up. Most of them were advertisements. Everyday the same ones show up joined by even more. I feel like someone is standing on a cyber street corner giving out my email address. Believe me, I never gave Donald Trump my email address.

I will admit that all email addresses are not equal in this abuse. The AOL account I have had since the days when AOL charged is by far the worst. With all the junk that comes in, it’s easy to miss a real email.

Determined to at least get rid of the junk emails that come in every day, I hit delete until my finger gets tired. But by then more junk emails have come in. The spam filter doesn’t seem to work very well anymore.

Yes, there are ways to unsubscribe, but it takes a lot of time and doesn’t always work. I guess as the saying goes, there is no free lunch. My finger is rested now, so it’s back to deleting.