Using Email For Everything 💌
"Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.” - Alan Watts
Now that I’ve been living a boring life the past few months, I’ve had time to reflect on it.
If I were to rank the methods used to reclaim my life, one of the most impactful was having everything delivered via email:
As I dipped my toes into the email-all-the-things philosophy and started offloading my news and social media to email, it felt like going back to the good ol’ RSS feed days of the early aughts.
Then I had all postal mail forwarded to a service that scans and emails me copies. I wondered why I didn’t do it sooner.
The final step of moving my mobile number to a voip service came and I balked. The service would email me all missed calls, texts and voicemails. I was so used to being on-call 24/7 that I delayed making the leap longer than I should have.
- What if I miss an important call?
- I’ll miss out on fun, last minute invites!
- What if my partner has an emergency?
- What if…
The final push came when I started getting 20+ spam calls and texts a day in July. My phone went from silent 99% of the time to ringing and dinging a few times an hour.
One afternoon in early August, I couldn’t take it anymore and said, F it! and pulled the trigger.
For the first few weeks I’d obsessively check my email for calls, voicemails and texts.
My partner and friends and family were a little annoyed but I told them that I was getting so many spam calls that I now send all calls to voicemail and they understood. My partner insisted on having my new “real” mobile number, but they’re the only one. Everyone else goes into my inbox.
As time went on, my anxiety over being on-call waned as I realized that none of my reservations came to pass. It was then that I stopped worrying and started enjoying the silence and lack of imposition and it’s been wonderful.
Further Reading
- Just Use Email
- Interesting Thoughts about the above link
- Surprising Uses For Email
- Use Plain Text Email