Email Stress!

I once read a joke. It went, "You know you are an e-mail junkie when you wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, but before you go there, you check your email, there is nothing, so you go to the bathroom, when you come back, you check your email, there is nothing, but you hit your refresh button anyway, there is still nothing, so you go back to sleep".

You think that is funny? Let me tell you something. Whoever wrote that joke doesn’t know me for sure.

I don't think an instrument or technology has yet been developed that can measure the number of times I hit the refresh button in a day. When I start the day, I usually have a few emails. They are all routine reports that I receive every day. I just breeze through them and I am disappointed that I don't have any other emails. So I hit the refresh button and that’s when it starts. Every time I see a small pop up on the right-hand side bottom of my screen, I immediately leave what I am doing and jump to my email browser and hit refresh. Every once in a while it is an important email and I pay attention to it. Most often it is just rhetoric and that frustrates me. I need an interesting email. So I hit the refresh button again. If a few moments pass without a new email, my blood-pressure rises. I hit the refresh button several times violently as though hitting the refresh button is going to get the emails flowing. It is like an obsession.

If you thought hitting the refresh button is my only vice, my company recently blessed me with a blackberry (God bless them). So the vice continues long after 5 PM. I drive home and on the way I undergo severe withdrawal symptoms because I am prohibited from pulling out my blackberry from my pocket. I promised my wife I will not check email when I am driving. Once I get home, I pick up my son and take him to his evening vocations. As soon as I have dropped him off at his karate class, my blackberry is out of my trouser pocket. There may be a mail or two and I am unhappy. This time the blackberry would go into the shirt pocket only to emerge a couple of minutes later. No email. So I will move to the address book and call someone. That way I have killed the next few minutes in anticipation of the next email. As soon as I am done with the call, I check email again. None. So I will aimlessly move the trackball of my blackberry to see what I can do next. Maybe call someone else, or go to the browser to check what's happening on my personal email. I just do not spare it. Once I have done that and know that I do not have many that are worthwhile, I quickly close the browser and am back to the menu.

There is that small icon of an envelope that has the number 2 next to it. "Wow"! That means 2 emails but that takes only 20 seconds to review and discard. Thank God there is no refresh button on the blackberry (or I am unaware of its existence), but with this gizmo I have another vice. I would scroll to the lock keypad icon and lock it. When an email arrives, the small envelope with the number next to it usually pops up even on lock mode, but even when there is no such icon, I soon unlock the keypad to see if I have email. After all, the blackberry is a man-made invention and it can still make a mistake. Lock, unlock, lock, unlock…

I am relieved of this vice only when my son walks out of his class because now I have to drive and the blackberry has to compulsorily go in my trouser pocket (where I can't pull it out of in the middle of the road). But that's only until the short five minute distance has been covered, for before the seat belt can come off, the blackberry comes out. Check email, no email. Then I go into my home, check email, remove my shoes, check email, drop off my bag, check email and finally, I reluctantly decide to plug my blackberry into the charger. I wish someone invents a blackberry that gets charged on body heat, so I don't have to ever part with it. So the blackberry kinda leaves my body for a couple of hours. Of course, every time I pass that desk between then and bed time (read a million), I hit the trackball to see if there is a small yellow envelope with a number next to it. If there is, I check email and duly lock the keypad but leave the blackberry in the charger. Not bad for self control, eh?

Soon, it's bed time. I need an alarm clock because I need to wake up at 5 AM and hit the gym. I wish that was my vice but that's only my excuse to pick up the blackberry again, set the alarm and put it under my pillow. Hold on dear reader, tired as you may be of reading this, that's not it. I wake up several times during the night and I have to pull out that blackberry from under the pillow and see how many hours I have before the alarm goes off. And if I chance to see that yellow envelope with that number next to it, I thank God my wife can't see the glee on my face. I check email. I go back to sleep happier than ever, only to wake up shortly after and repeat the entire routine.

Soon, the alarm goes off. I am up in a flash and in some kind of involuntary motion my hand grabs the blackberry and once I have dismissed the alarm, I check email. I am up dutifully and the blackberry goes into my pockets till I brush my teeth and then before I re-unite it with its charger, I check email. They can stay united for some time, because the next thing I do even before I turn on the lights, is pull out my computer from my bag.

Another day of email stress has just begun…


This is an original article published on msn.co.in on 13 Oct 2008.