In the drafts folder of my email sits a half-written reply to a woman who wrote me in anger. Hers was a lengthy, well-argued, point-by-point dissection of a column she didn't like, so I wanted to put the same amount of effort into my response.
Which is why it has sat there, growing cobwebs and a greenish-blue substance that looks suspiciously like mould, since 2014.
I repeat: 2014. Five years. The First World War only took four.
The draft is like my old hockey gear. Every once in a while I try to work up the gumption to throw it out, but that would mean resigning myself to defeat, to the reality that too much time has passed and it's all over. So I just stare at it for a while, then turn away. (I also do this with combs.) My email inbox is even worse, a long scroll of unanswered messages mutely glaring at me accusingly with pursed lips and hands on hips, wondering when, or if, I will free them from their purgatory. Some are so old they're written in Sanskrit. Some have outlived their authors.
This weighs on me, my guilt eased only by the knowledge that I am not alone. For chances are that you, too, Dear Reader, have a message backlog longer than the Nanaimo phone book circa 1993.
And that's why they came up with Email Debt Forgiveness Day.
Arriving each April 30, Email Debt Forgiveness Day was created four years ago by P.J. Vogt and Alex Goldman, the co-hosts of the internet-related Reply All podcast. Their intent was to set aside a day when, without explanation or apology, you get to answer, guilt-free, the messages you have left untended since the Harper era.
Here's how they say you should do it. First dig out the email you've been avoiding. Then write a reply, ignoring the amount of time that has lapsed. Be sure to add a link to this page: emaildebtforgiveness.me. Then send and enjoy your anxiety-free day.
They say the Email Debt Forgiveness idea was inspired by the time Goldman got a string of messages from his old bandmates, talking about getting together for one last gig. Unsure how to respond, Goldman simply didn't.
We have all been there. Some emails can be dispensed with quickly, either with an easy reply or by chucking them straight in the trash like a Tofurky or a Boston Bruins sweater. Others, alas, are more complicated, leading you to treat them as you would an April snowfall or a door-knocking politician: close the blinds and hope they go away on their own.
Which they don't. So every now and then you take a deep breath and make a concerted effort to clear the accumulation, hacking away like a machete-wielding Indiana Jones until, exhausted, you are brought to a halt by the impenetrable wall of foliage/verbiage.
It never ends. We now open our inboxes the way Dorothy Parker used to greet the ring of her doorbell: "What fresh hell is this?" Even the most welcome emails demand attention, distracting us from the other things in life that need doing. They pour in faster than we can deal with them until, like Lucille Ball on the chocolate-factory assembly line (YouTube it for a laugh, Junior, it's guaranteed to dampen your drawers), we are overwhelmed.
This is quantifiable: In 2017, researchers at Ottawa's Carleton University found the typical Canadian "knowledge worker" spends 11.7 hours a week on emails at the office, plus another 5.3 hours dealing with work-related messages at home. This month, the Radicati Group, a California-based tech market research firm, estimated that globally 293 billion emails are sent each day, a figure it expects to grow to more than 347 billion by 2023. An earlier Radicati study said office workers receive an average of 121 emails a day.
Remember your childhood when, while death-marching to school with uncompleted homework, you clung to the slim hope that maybe, just maybe, a fireball would hurtle down from above and blast you into oblivion? ("Please, God, if you must take me, how about doing it before third period Algebra?") That's how we feel now, though these days I just pray that some Russian hacker will cripple every computer in Canada, knocking us back to the Stone Age and relieving me of the need to deal with that five-year-old email.
Forgive us, for we have sinned.
