What My Inbox Brought Me

2,000

I deleted 2,000 emails last night.

We put Ellie to bed on time and Sean fell asleep with her...so, I figured I'd do a little cleaning up.

I've created a lot of systems to help me juggle the things between work, life, parenting, etc. but email is one I just haven't been able to "get".

It's like a text - I either respond right away or I "wait until the perfect time to respond" aka 2 weeks. Okay, maybe not that extreme all the time, but sometimes!

Over the past couple of days I've noticed that when I open my email I get an overwhelmed feeling. There are so many freaking emails. Some I need to read, some I'd like to read to learn, and some I wonder why I haven't just deleted after I did read them.

So, I started with the promotions tab and would search a specific sender and then delete them all. It was hard because I really wanted to read some of them, but I also knew it just wasn't going to happen. If it's meant for me to learn, it'll come back around.

Then accidentally clicked to have them in order of oldest to newest - the deleting went waaaay faster because they were from 2018 .

I had emails from 2018! Which for some reason seems like yesterday and 25 years ago at the same time.

I quickly moved through the updates tab and then came to my main inbox.

I had a moment.

2018 was when we were deep into The Hatchery as a coworking space. Emails requesting tours, new member welcomes, event confirmations, marketing services that Raigan offered, team meeting notes from Tristen, announcing the opening and closing of our second location, and some that I had totally forgotten to respond to 🤦🏼‍♀️.

I paused and smiled remembering these days.

Today, as I write this tears, are welling up in my eyes as I again remember the amazing memories. The hard, stressful days, the new friendships, the collaborations, the conversations...so much goodness and difficulty wrapped into one feeling.

I kept some of the emails, but most of them I deleted. It didn't feel like "delete = ugh get out of here", but it was more of a release. An appreciation for every single thing (good, bad, ugly) and then a release.

As the overwhelming number of emails quickly fell off so did some emotional weight.

There are many stages to our life and our business and I truly feel we have to release things before we can allow ourselves to move forward.

This all may sound a little "woo" right now, but there was just something so freeing about hitting delete...the emails may be gone but what I learned, witnessed, and got to be a part of will forever be there.

And beyond this moment I'm not sure what this is opening up for me (and for us) but the fact that it's heavy on my mind this morning means something!

So, I leave you with this question...is there anything you're potentially hanging onto that's causing overwhelm that you can "delete" or lay down?