Ten pounds lighter

There are probably other things I could have been doing, but I took advantage of an hour on this meeting-free morning to go through my email archive and delete old messages. I've probably mentioned before that when I arrived at this job nearly four years ago, I inherited my predecessor's electronic and paper archives.

She is a self-described "information packrat," and whenever I'm feeling particularly discouraged and have a few extra minutes of free time (almost never), I like to comfort myself by deleting e-files and recycling paper ones. (Interesting note: for an environmentally conscious person, she certainly did a lot of printing out of pages and pages of web sites.)

Up until now, I had kept conservative on my deletions. Anything associated with a project I had worked on in my time here stayed. I deleted only the items that I knew were long dead and gone. I learned early on that often, if you neglect a project long enough, people will lose interest and it will die by itself.

My email archive has been out of control for a while. Last year, I had to add a second, separate archive file just to handle the emails, and it complains about being over-full every few months. At that point I go in and delete a few big files to ease the pain.

So, today I was brutal. I deleted all the emails regarding projects from my first couple of years, for a web site that exists only in the archive graveyard, as we did a total re-launch in 2006. Then I went into most of the active folders and deleted anything from before 2006. I still have lots of musty corners, both virtual and physical, to explore in my office, but my hard drive is sighing with relief.

It was a good exercise in letting go. I've been taking a meditation class since January, which has reminded me how very poor I am at meditating. It seemed to be going pretty well at first, but now my subconscious is making a last-ditch effort to cling to its attachments. They say that, in our distracted mind, we usually gravitate toward either the past or the future.

It felt great to say goodbye to the past's electronic ghost. Over the last few years, I've kept particularly vitriolic emails from outraged faculty and other detractors, as a badge of honor, I guess. Today, I didn't hesitate to delete them all. Why hold on to the nastiness? In general, I don't have too much trouble letting go of the past. The future is the one that keeps me up at night. I'm a plot junkie.

The other thing I noted while deleting emails was, damn, I have done a lot of work over the last four years. I've come a very long way and my job has changed tangibly because of hard work. I've built and distributed sites for close to 30 offices that used to rely on my to do even their most minute updates. I've managed a major web site redesign and moved from chief peon to a manager of several people and a somewhat respected (as much as anyone ever gets respect around here) voice about online marketing. And you know what? I deserve it because I worked my ass off.

Most days are so demanding that I just keep my head down and try to focus on the question of the moment. Sometimes it's incredibly detailed (this table won't line up with this image; how do we word these instructions?) and other times it's big picture (how do we get these people to do this thing we want them to do?). Rarely do I step back and see the full, sprawling project. Rarely do I have the time to look at my work and think, "my, how you've grown!"