emails

28 Dec, 2024

A side quest I went down while thinking about the new blog was messaging people. Broadly, because of the many blog post footers I read suggesting that I email the author about... anything; specifically, because one of the many blogs I found while exploring implored me to watch this XOXO talk by Cabel Sasser (it's good, but for reasons totally unrelated to this post), which incidentally had a specific call to action about email, and although I doubt it was meant to be about specifically email rather than any other communication method, it added to the pile.

I think if you asked me how I felt about email, I would have said it's wonderful. Completely universal and interoperable, one of the longest-standing remnants of the dream of a free, open Internet that sometimes seems a bit quixotic these days. (How true this is in practice is, of course, a bit murky.) I do suggest emailing me on my contact page, and next to the janky self-hosted comment form on my main blog. Sometimes people do that.

Still, if I introspect a bit more, email feels a bit unnatural to use for me. In my head, you're supposed to start with a salutation and end with a signature, you want to make sure you have the full thing you want to say before sending, and you want to... have something to say. When I get a nice DM on Discord or something, replying with, say, a single word of "Thanks!" — maybe even less, like a single ❤️ or 🙏 or 🫡 — feels totally normal; when I get a nice email, replying just "Thanks!" feels deranged. (Even though, I have to remind myself, it's obviously much better than not replying at all.) In a nutshell, the activation energy to write or reply to an email is much higher. Then again, it's hard to disentangle how I feel about that that from how the people I'm emailing are usually strangers or people with whom I have a professional relationship, while the people I'm DMing are usually close friends or friends of friends. And also, compared to public comments on a blog or replies on social media, the high-activation-energy aspect isn't only a bad thing; it means you know each message you receive meant that much more to the sender, that it wasn't performative on their part trying to chase clout or a follow-back; it might be less overwhelming.

I also have horrible email hygiene and I don't know if I really believe myself when I recommend people email me. In 2012 (!)¹ I wrote a post railing for keeping your unread count down. I cannot refute any of the arguments. But earlier today, when I checked my inbox, it had five digits of emails, going back more than a year. Fortunately, since I actually had some free time due to the holidays, I put on a high-energy playlist and went through all of them. I unsubscribed from a bunch of lists. I found a survey from back home, about alumni of the high school competitions I did, that I had missed and felt a little bit bad about missing; the deadline was long past, so there was nothing to be done. I also found some emails from a Kickstarter I backed that hadn't worked out but was now selling their stuff through a separate online shop, which I promptly ordered. I learned that my COVID test supplier had shut down, which I will need to look into at some point. And, naturally, I found a few emails I had starred to remind myself to reply to, but hadn't.

Will my empty inbox last? It would be a great kind of new year's resolution to keep it that way, but I don't know if I actually convinced myself deep down that it was worth it. The whole process only took 1–2 hours even including all the ways I got distracted in the middle, which really isn't that bad for an annual process. Though since I only spent a fraction of a second on most of those emails, there are probably more that I would have noticed if I were going through them more slowly and more regularly.

More importantly than all of this, of course, I was inspired to email a few people even though I wasn't sure if I had anything to say. I don't have any success stories to report yet, but I might do more tomorrow.