I know that email has done some great things for us as a society and that most of us simply can't live without it. But today it is driving me crazy. So in honor of my day, here is my...
"Top Ten List of Things I Miss About Life Before Email"
10. I used to do other things at work besides answer email.
9. I didn't live with the false hope of winning a lottery in Zambia.
8. I received actual birthday cards. (April 22 btw).
7. I didn't have more prayer requests than time to pray. (I know that sounded really unspiritual - its been a long day - please pray for me).
6. I was blissfully ignorant of my friends' crazy politics.
5. I had moments of delightful inaccessibility. (This is #1 on my "life before cell phones" list).
4. Students turned in their papers on paper. (I love red pens and coffee stains).
3. People had to memorize their jokes and tell them to me in person.
2. I said (or wrote) fewer dumb (or angry) things to people that I can't take back.
1. People at least had to pay $.42 to air their criticisms.
Feel free to add any of your thoughts to the list. Just don't email them to me :)
I absolutely love your list! Enough' said.
Posted by: Amanda | October 22, 2008 at 09:23 PM
I miss the days when people didn't expect a reply within 15 minutes...as for delightful inaccessibility, make your own! My business partner and I get our best ideas away from everybody with the cell phones/Blackberries off and nowhere to forward the calls.
On the plus side for email, I'm entertained by all the urban legends in my emailbox--I can only remember hearing a couple before email came around.
Posted by: Chris Johnson | October 22, 2008 at 10:40 PM
Actually, they didn't have to pay 42 cents to criticize you "before email." The first email was invented in 1965 and the postage rate was around 5 cents. Popular internet email dates around 1993 as "the global standard." Postage then was 29 cents. If they spent 42 cents by either standard, then I'd hate to know what you did to them or preached on that Sunday... I looked all this up on the Internet, so, of course, it's right. Feel like screaming yet? *Big grin :-)
Posted by: Smile | October 23, 2008 at 03:58 AM
Mass e-mail forwards, especially, are of the devil....
Posted by: christa | October 23, 2008 at 11:12 PM
Regarding #2, "One of God's better jokes on us was to give us the power to remember the past and leave us no power to undo it. We have all sometimes been willing to trade almost anything for a magic sponge to wipe just a few moments off the tables of time. But whatever the mind can make of the future, it cannot silence a syllable of the past. There is no delete key for reality"--Lewis Smedes, The Art of Forgiving, xi.
There can be forgiveness though--if not reunification at times, so said Smedes.
Posted by: Laura | November 03, 2008 at 08:47 PM