This is My Letter to the World that Never Wrote to Me

Yes, I know. I owe you an email. You think I’ve forgotten, but the truth is, I’m well aware that it’s my turn to contribute to our bungee cord pattern of correspondence. In fact, I’ll confess that I’ve owed you an email for quite some time now. I’ve been meaning to write. I just can’t seem to get my act together.

I almost wrote you yesterday but then I started surfing and before long it was 3am. I can’t send email at 3am because whenever I do, some wise-ass insists on responding with ‘what the freak were you doing up at 3am!?!? I sure hope that was EST not PST! Go to BED woman!’


Ok, but I’d like to remind you that following your pre-approved emailing hours allows me to shift the email tardiness blame by at least a year. Maybe more.

I used to respond to messages within hours – sometimes even minutes. Now it’s more like days… or weeks… sometimes months... Back then, email was exciting. I would write to friends. I would write to family. I would write to complete strangers who stumbled on my website and accepted my invitation to just say ‘hi’. Now I’m lucky if I remember to email myself to-do lists and meeting reminders.

Actually, I’m not sure why I don’t email anymore. Maybe it’s the fact that a little bell shrills from my blackberry within seconds of a new email appearing in my inbox (this would be helpful save for you eager little Toronto beavers who arrive merrily at work by 8am where you proceed to whip off email responses with no thought to us poor sleeping blackberry slaves). Maybe it’s because email is now an obligation, not falling much short of those maternal dictates of “don’t forget to send a thank you note to Aunt Mary if you know what’s good for you!”

Once in a while I’ll sit down with the lofty goal of emptying my inbox. In order to be successful at this, I have to ensure I have several hours of free time yawning in front of me. Why? Because I’m incapable of responding to one or two emails at a time. It’s all or nothing baby! I prefer to let them accumulate and age, leaving enough stories and misadventures to properly distribute across my audience, ensuring no one (myself included) gets bored too quickly.

Despite saving several hours for the task, nine times out of ten my ‘Email hours’ are quickly sucked up by Internet Research (ie, procrastination) – usually in the form of interesting websites, online surveys, celebrity gossip mags or political satire sites. For instance, the other day as I settled in for my allocated emailing time, I stumbled across a riveting article about Tiger Woods and his decision to get into golf course design...

I don’t even like golf. What’s wrong with me?

I’m not sure, but one thing is clear: I am a bad emailer, and that means I am in a constant state of emaipology.

For example, my good friend Leigh, who lives in Korea, emailed me nearly a year ago. True to the nature of all poor emailers, I had prefaced my last missive to him with the disclaimer that I am the world’s worst emailer. True to the nature of my good friend Leigh, he didn’t even pretend to accept my lukewarm excuses. “World’s worst emailer?” he wrote. “Yup!” But in fairness to me, sometimes he takes a while to write too, and quite a few of our emails have begun with, “I’m sorry I haven’t written for so long, I’ve just been busy.” Unfortunately for me, I have a feeling Leigh actually is quite busy. For that reason, I'm not going to mention that my time has been taken up with... well... golf.

Then there’s Jeff, my good friend from New Brunswick, who emailed me last spring to tell me he’d dreamed I travelled to New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland in the fall of 2006. Great! Unfortunately, according to Jeff, I don't behave any better as a figment of someone elses' dream, because I forgot to visit him during my holiday. It's now halfway through the final month of fall 2006, and while Jeff can be assured he's not the next great prophet, I am ashamed to admit there's been no reassurance about my travel plans - or lack thereof - from either the dream me or the real one. Sorry Jeff.

Or my sister, bless her frozen little Winnipeg butt. My mom called a few weeks ago to ask if I was mad at Beth, after all I haven’t responded to her repeated email attempts. I tried to explain that one email from her every four to six weeks is clearly not enough pressure. I need much more frequent nagging than that. The fact that my nieces have gone from diapers to lipstick in the amount of time it's taken for me to answer even one of Beth's emails is something best not brought up over Christmas dinner.

And Al, thanks for sending me the evite, though to be honest, I do live in the same apartment as you and walking to my room would probably have been quicker than logging on. I do plan to attend the party, and I’ll RSVP eventually. It’s just that I went to your evite.com page to tell you I was coming and noticed that everyone else had left a witty comment. Unfortunately it was 3am, and I just couldn’t think of anything. I was going to write “Woohoo!” but then I saw that Brian had already put that down. I considered “Rock and roll!” but that seemed a little too Vroomanesque. I’ll RSVP tomorrow with an appropriately wittified comment. Ok Saturday. Maybe Tuesday at the outside?

These days, I've actually reached the point where I'll just phone or text friends who email me. This makes no sense, of course. Email, after all, was supposed to free us from the phone. When my friend Tracy emails, for example, I simply call or text her. "You live in the apartment downstairs. You don't get e-mail from me," I tell her. I'm too busy not emailing far away friends to write to a nearby friend like her.

I've talked with several friends about this, and they too feel a certain malaise when it comes to email. The thrill is gone. These days, just about everyone has email, and we all receive far too much of it. Even my mother is nagging me. "How come you never call?" has suddenly been replaced with "how come you never email?"

I tell her the truth of course. I’m studying golf.