Anytime I set my phone down and someone takes a glance at the screen, they always gasp.
No, not because I have a pornographic background or am playing some ridiculous video...but because their eyes gravitate towards the little red number that sits atop my Gmail icon.
Lately it's been sitting around 1,200. Apparently I'm the only one that keeps that many unread emails.
You can be most assured I have no idea how it gets to that height. I read and answer emails all day, it's almost a full time job it feels like. Yet no matter what, I must get more new emails than I can possible delete let alone go through. SPAM is a real deal and I tend to sign up for a lot of things. You have to as a photographer. There are groups to join, products to buy, and companies to register with. It's a part of the game.
And it's killing my inbox.
So today I tried something. I went in, and just picked something to delete. I searched for a couple of groups that send me emails daily, and went through my social folder to just delete en masse some of these emails. I was allowed to do up to 50 at a time, and I had to weed through a bit to make sure I wasn't deleting anything I wanted to keep.
I got it to 1149 by the end of it. Wow, progress right?
Twenty minutes later, I had another handful. This means war. It's five o'clock somewhere so I have indeed busted open the Fireball but...tonight's project in addition to editing wedding photos is going to be to clear out the inbox. Then see how long it takes to get it back up to ridiculous numbers.
How long will it take me to read, verify, and delete over one thousand emails? We'll find out. Though I probably won't actually time it. So I'll probably just make up a number. But you'll believe it.
Because you have to.
P.S. Don't look at the un-updated apps. That's a whole different problem. If you have a way to combat that, let me know.