My aunt sent me another bunch of those e mails this morning. You know the kind. "This is a keeper" and "This is important" etc. Jokes and cute pictures and thoughts of the day set to flowing pictures of water and mountains, surrounded by smarmy music. And I am tempted to write to her, but it would get nasty, and she doesn't deserve it. She is retired and has time on her hands, and thinks this stuff is cute and /or important, and that the rest of us are grateful to receive it. I need to figure out a way to tell her, without hurting her, that each day I have to rapidly erase 20-50 e mails, a number of times each day, so my box does not get clogged and refuse to admit others; that I am feeling overwhelmed with projects I have to do to serve my clients, with documents I need to review for volunteer work, with my current resolve to again to fit in some daily work out time (which has been difficult for so long, but at my age is truly a life and death issue ) with the need to do my billing (of which I am solely in charge, and if I don't do it, then there is no money coming in, and bills cannot be paid), and the fact that my apartment is an unsightly pile of clothing and books and files and papers since I can't (or won't) find the time to clean it up - probably because when I do get to it, periodically, I cannot let myself just do a half job, but need to really organize things so that it takes a very, very long time - time that I just don't have. So I'll just hit the "delete" button over and over, and take a deep breath, and get up to the treadmill for a bit, maybe, and grab a healthy 250 calorie Vivanno with green tea matcha powder across the street at Starbucks, and then work on revising the joint venture agreement that I really have to complete by this afternoon, and enter time into the Timeslips program so that I can print out at least a few bills, and read two files for my volunteer work because it is overdue, and review a client's proposed consulting agreement that another lawyer revised by rewriting so I have to look at it and my earlier draft side by side rather than reviewing redline sections, and do a favor for a friend/business contact by going through her documents with a litigation attorney to find out if she has a prayer at resurrecting a judgment, and go through the rest of the loan documents for a client facing foreclosure, and call a client whose check to me bounced but who I cannot ignore because he needs me to help him finish the development and sale of units in his condominium before his foreclosing lender can take further steps against him, and go back to editing some of my short stories so that I can stop avoiding the self publishing company representative who keeps calling and put them together, finally, into a book, and write the three travel articles for Bonjourparis.com that I took notes on during my last trip to France a month or so ago, and find the time to wash my face and brush my teeth and get a salad for lunch, and call my son to see if he still wants to go out this evening to celebrate his birthday, and ...........................................
No, Aunt G, I really don't want to yell at you - but I cannot read your cute, fun, important e mails. I hope you understand.