Are we getting ready? (Ok, but for what?)

I thought it was just me.

I spend the last couple of months digging to the bottom of my inbox.

I unsubscribed over and over and over.

Now when someone asks for my email (“10% off!”), I think, “yeah, right. You keep your discount and I will keep my sanity.”

By December 31st, I was down to zero. An empty inbox!

A picture of the blessed event.

I assumed this was just me, caught up in the good intentions of New Years.

And then I read this post by Tanya Basu who calls for taming of email, muting notifications, engaging in a digital cleanse, and a “Digital Cleanup January.”

‘Oh,’ I thought, “Maybe, it’s a ‘“thing.”’

And then I wondered, like, why? Why are we digging out from under the great clutter of the digital world?

In the early days, this clutter was one of the joys of the digital world. You could arrange to hear from lots of people, efficiently, effortlessly.

For the very small fee of our email address came a stream of tiny gifts. A veritable Mississippi of facts and opinions. And we were its delta. Oh. The gift was turning into something onerous and overwhelming.

Then something snapped. At least for me.

All of a sudden, I was, like, “enough!”

And all of a sudden, with an empty inbox, less was more. A lot more. So much more. I could breathe.

Then I was, like, “are we getting ready for something?”

It feels like something is coming.

But of course something is coming. It’s called the future.

Um, maybe, not the future but a new concept of the future.

Maybe the future is not “what happens next.”

Maybe it’s a problem we have to learn to solve.

Maybe the future is a foreign country, a place we need to learn to live.

How do we do this?

It will take a lot more than taming our inbox.

But that’s a good start.