Diamonds are forever. Email comes close.

So I am bad, *really* bad, about not deleting messages from my personal inbox.  Which is sort of amusing since my work one is always so very anally organized.  But between the ability to flag (my flagged messages are a reasonable number) and a reasonable ability to search, I can find what I need and so tend not to delete.  As a result, I have (I mean - "had") more than 10,000 messages -- about 2000 of which were unread.  And randomly decided this week I'd get them under control.

Well at the moment I'm down to 1600 messages, of which 194 are unread -- and will be even lower by the end of the post ;)   But what's been interesting is that in some ways, it offers a strange review of life.  Strange in that it is thoroughly warped, but it's been both fun and frustrating to go through.  My email history went back to about the time I went to Denny's.  So close to the same as the start of the blog.  But things like messages from the guys at Overdrive.  I always used my work email there, so anything in this inbox was fun stuff like photos from entertaining team nights or even just randomness on our way to meetings.  Then there were the zillion and one (that's only a *slight* exaggeration -- a disproportionate number of the 10k belong in this category) emails horse shopping when I started GRS. All the horses I didn't buy, and even more exciting to remember, the ones I did.  Circus school and various clinic arrangements. The frustrations of all the paperwork for starting the business and the excitement of new clients.   Then later, all the emails about moving and two years of life at Lochland.   Client emails looking for "assessments" who I now consider close friends.  Really cool.

Of course the challenges are also recorded.  Clients who didn't work out for one reason or another, things that did work out but went through rough patches, things that I wanted to happen that didn't (I loved that little event mare!) and things that I didn't want to happen that did...  And of course more recently, the job hunting -- the excitement finding a job I'd love and be perfect for, and the disappointment of the auto-rejection.

Definitely one of the most fun things to review were all the comments and responses on the blog -- both the normal section and the flash fiction.  Everything leading up to my first story being published in an anthology, and then publishing my first book.  None of that would ever have happened if it hadn't been for the exceptionally warm welcome I received to #fridayflash.  Reliving all of that has been very cool.  Esp as while I get hard copies made of my regular blog (although haven't done last year yet -- need new software.  Any suggestions?) and they include comments, I haven't done it with my flash...   Although now I'm inclined to cause it was really cool to reread.  Also makes me want to write more. We shall see.

Ah well, I was amused anyways :)   And my inbox is under 1000 now ;)   Back to work.