emails and dishes

there's a few areas in my life where i do not tolerate unfinished business. one of those areas is dirty dishes, the other area is my inbox. okay, maybe i tolerate dirty dishes a tad.

so how do dishes and my inbox share similarities?

my inbox almost never has an unread message. this goes for work as well for personal email.

managing an inbox can be quite a bit of work. i've noticed that i'm on microsoft outlook for about 80% of my workday. and when i'm on a computer doing personal stuffs, gmail.com is where i spend about 60% of my time. apparently communicating seems to be a high priority on my internet plate (dishes pun. right, you got that). i should migrate that effort towards blogging, as my blog is about as stale as my loaf of bread that fell behind the refrigerator last year.

i don't quit the work day unless each email has been read/responded to, or categorized for action tomorrow. at home, i do the exact same. before i quit the computer i make sure that it doesn't say "Inbox(1)", because if it does i won't be able to truly rest. sounds like some eastern philosophical belief.

speaking of which (prepare for a tangent), currently my gmail account has 7321Mb of available space, and this grows slowly each day. that's almost 7 and a half gigs of space. at work i'm given 250Mb. we're not talking a 250Mb inbox, this is my entire account, inbox, sent box, calendar items, etc. i have the ability to archive items to my local (C:\) drive, but that creates more than one location for emails. and of course the outlook search is about as powerful as a clock radio speaker.

hypothetical work scenario:
"you told me to submit that form to you today?
where is that form?
you emailed it to me two months ago?
okay, give me 20 minutes to first search through my current inbox, and then i'll start looking through my massive archives.
end scenario, 20 mins from now.

hypothetical home scenario:
them: "do you have so-and-so's home address?"
me:"search entire gmail account. yea they sent it to everyone in 2006 on june 12th at 4:32pm pst. here you go..."
end scenario, with a smile.

hypothetical dishes scenario:
gosh i wish i was clever enough to tie this one back. cleaning an inbox and cleaning dishes before bed is one thing. inefficient work email accounts vs efficient free ones is another thing. errr, using the sponge vs my dishwasher? alright i'll give that up.

let's end on the fact that i have a newfound love for cast iron cookware.