Sometimes I Wonder If They Exchange Messages With One Another. You Know, Just to Keep Each Other Company. Since They're All Lonely and Forgotten and All.

Okay, so you know how you have your Safe Email Account and your Junk Email Account? And how you start out with a new email address and you're all determined that this will be your Safe Address that does NOT get filled with all sorts of bills and spam and emails from people you're trying to pretend Do Not Exist (Anymore)?

And you know how this becomes a long line of Safe Accounts becoming Junk Accounts?

Yeah. My Safe Account (In Real Life, not my bloggy address, though no doubt that is doomed one day as well) is slowly making that change.

I remember the first real email address I had was in college, that good old Michigan State University one that ended with a million extensions Back In The Day (cuz I'm getting Old, y'all) before they decided to simplify things the year after I graduated. Whatever. It was so primitive. Yellowish-white letters on a black background, because that was how we rolled in the Days of Yore. When I graduated, I knew I would never use it again, but it was handy as the I-Have-to-Write-Down-an-Email-Addy-so-Here's-the-One-I-Never-Use default. You know, for all those applications and memberships and whatnot where you know they only require an email so they can flood you with more spam than a World War II foxhole.

I also had a freebie Juno account for a while, but that one became attached to a short-lived stunt as a book editor for a tiny publishing company run by a very former friend who thought that quantity mattered far more than quality. (Remind me to tell you about that some day.) My real maiden name is still out there on the Intarwebz attached to that stupid company on a no-longer-legit but not-quite-defunct website, so no doubt there are still some poor saps sending cover letters and manuscript teasers to that lonely Juno account. If it still works. I don't even remember what it was and have no intention of figuring it out, so whatever.

(Sorry, author-wannabees. I feel for you, but really, you would have regretted that move anyhow. The idiot dweeb individual who ran that company would probably have expected you to turn around and pour any profits right back into the company because, you know, it would pay out Someday When We Get Big. Ha.)

(Not that I'm bitter.)

There were a couple other short-lived accounts along the way, but I didn't use them much. There was one for the school where I interned, but unless some misguided students and parents kept emailing me after I left, no one's using that any longer. Probably deleted anyhow. And I think there was one for the Time Warner Road Runner internet service we used when we lived in an apartment in my early years of teaching, but I never really used that.

No, I was using Hotmail by then. Ah yes, that Hotmail account. Those who know me personally may remember the days of my Hotmail address, which used (and still uses) my maiden name. There are still a few people who get confuzzled and email me there, which is now where messages go to die.

Because my Hotmail account became my Junk Account about five years ago. We moved into a house and our new internet provider provided us with shiny new email addies. The transition was both inevitable and timely: already my Inbox was starting to pile up with far too many spam and business emails, and my index finger was cramping up from hitting delete.

You see, there comes a time when one starts having to use one's REAL account for certain memberships and business accounts, especially when one starts signing up for those oh-so-convenient online billing and banking transactions.

So my Hotmail account became my Junk/Business Account, and my SBCGlobal account became my Personal/Aren't You Special account. Some people missed the news, but most friends and families simply sighed and dutifully changed their Contact lists.

(We won't go into how AT&T took over SBC after a while, which was Not Welcome since I'm really not fond of AT&T and the whole thing brought up some I thought monopolies were against the law!!!! rage.)

So this morning I opened up my SBC AT&T Yahoo (dammit) account and sighed. Because sitting in my Inbox, as has been the case pretty much every day recently, were multiple spam and ad messages.

You see, my Hotmail/Junk account is slowly going by the wayside. Every time I open it up I find there are approximately 1,289,456,723 new messages waiting for me, and the sheer effort of skimming through them to find the very few remaining legitimate messages, all of which are bill-related, is just exhausting. So when I've opened up or changed bills and accounts lately, I've been using my Real email addy.

Which is the Kiss of Death.

Right now I'm only seeing the edge of the tide. Inevitably it will rise and the flow of unwanted and delete-worthy messages will become unmanageable.

Looks like it's time to start shopping for a new address.  Which means that another email account will join the throng of spam-choked long-forgotten Inboxes trailing mournfully in my wake.

Gmail, anyone?