27 June 2013 ~ 0 Comments

Straight to Junk

Ugh. Gmail has been my hero for nearly the last decade. That “ever growing” capacity didn’t grow fast enough for my email volume, and for the last five years I’ve even had to pay a bit of money each year to get more space in my email. My brain “auto-archives” or searches based on “from:(insert name)”. I’ve sent a ton of people an email intervention. I’ve been Gmail’s biggest fan. But, for the first time, Gmail has failed me. (Fade to lowercase.)

I’m not sure if it’s that my gmail was hacked in the China Eastern Airlines lounge a few months ago on a layover in Shanghai when my computer started doing weird things, or if my gmail caught bird flu, or rabies, or what….. but my gmail is now going straight to junk. Or, in a few cases over the last few months, people can’t even find the email at all, not even in their junk. Straight to space perhaps. It’s like a drunk and confused newspaper delivery man – sometimes getting the paper to the right stoop, sometimes straight into the trash can, but a lot of the times, over the back fence and into the neighbor’s yard with the big dog, and the news is never to be seen again.

So that’s my news. My emails are being eaten. And it’s not like a 4th grade “the dog ate my homework” excuse. With the homework, you didn’t really do it – and you certainly didn’t want to! These are emails I not only wanted to write, but also took a long time TO write!!!  And they are MISSING IN ACTION!

So, I’m writing all this because today, I FINALLY finished writing back to all of the great emails, questions, thoughts, etc that people sent after the BBC piece I wrote on international service went live. But a lot of you probably didn’t actually receive my emails as they could now be hanging out with viagra ads in your junk box. It seems gmail is more likely to throw my words to the dogs on emails to people I don’t normally write to. (Understandable for the confused postman, but very sad when it’s my once-heroic gmail!).

So, if you wrote me a note on my blog in the last few month and you DIDN’T hear back from me, check your junk mail. Or drop me a note again and I can try to re-forward the email. Because I really did write to you (a looooong email to a girl who is working with friends to fund a school building in Cambodia in an orphanage they are concerned about, others asked for advice etc….). Check your junk, because I’d rather you get to feed on my emails than the dogs! And my poor email certainly doesn’t like being squished between a casino advertisement and a lady saying you need to wire her $10,000 to help save her from Guatemalan kidnappers. I’d like to think my email’s more valuable than that junk, so please dumpster dive into your own trash pile, and save my little note! Thanks, and apologies to all this applies to!