What's app'ing ere?

   Earlier this week I was supposed to be working on an entry for my Monday blog spot that I call Monday Musings. It is meant to be a lighthearted way to start my week and get into the swing of writing so that I meet my weekly goals. Instead, I was busy screwing up my email. In my usual style, I did this in a big kind of way.

   Like many other technology users, I tend to use multiple devices. It is not unusual in the span of one day for me to use a smartphone, laptop, tablet and possibly a second computer. Much of my usage depends on where I am located, if other users in my house need a particular device (yes, we share technology devices in our house) or what the task is I wish to complete. For some tasks, I prefer to use one device over another for ease of use. I generally use my laptop or the other computer when writing because I like the keyboards for typing. I like to use the tablet when wasting time researching on Pintrest. My phone is the device of choice when utilizing my calendar.

   However, for other tasks, I use whatever technology I can get my hands on. With the development of mobile sites and apps, this should be easy, right? Well, not exactly. Facebook(tm) seems to provide a pretty seamless experience between computers, smart phones and other electronic devices, however, my current email platform is not this fluid. Our school websites do not provide this seamless experience either, though they are good about taking suggestions and implementing them. Although I enjoy Facebook(tm), it is primarily for me to stalk my friends and family relax and fool around. Email and school websites, on the other hand, are essential tools. Between those two platforms alone, I almost look and feel as if I have it all together.

   Since the school was taking steps to make their website and mobile platforms provide the same user experience, I decided that I could do the same with my email. I had become frustrated with the current provider I was using because the apps for my various devices behaved badly and did not have the same capabilities that the website versions did. For instance, the apps tended to capture my emails on whatever device I was using, making it impossible for me to call up the same email on another device, even though I had not deleted that correspondence, or filed it away in a folder. The app did not allow me to access pictures I had saved on a cloud. Sometimes the app was not good about attaching documents either. Worse yet, the app version of my email provider did not have a feature to select a group from my contact list. Apparently this is not a problem for Apple users, but I am not an Apple user for other reasons. And I send a lot of group emails. Entering each email address individually is time consuming (even with simply selecting the name from the contacts list) and using this method increases the chance of missing someone who should have been included. That takes away from my appearance of having it all together.

   

   Intending to simplify my email dilemma, I decided to try and switch to a provider I thought would make things easier to manage. As I began the process, I learned a lot about myself.

1. I was not as tech savvy as I liked to believe I was.
2. I have the patience of a two year old chipmunk.
3. I was a cyber hoarder!

   Me, a hoarder. How could that be? I was so embracing minimalism!

   

   I found that I had no less than six email addresses. Six! These six were spread out over four different providers. Three of these provider platforms had various folders in which to store "important" emails in case they need to be referenced for future use. I did not want to spend any time moving individual emails or contacts to my new provider, so I looked at having the new provider do it for me.

  

   Deceived by the simplicity of the instructions for importing my email addresses to the new provider that I had chosen, I opted to allow the system to automatically import my emails. It took five minutes longer than I wanted. But in the end, it did the job and moved my emails. All of my emails. Including the emails I had sorted into folders just in case I needed them in the future. All moved into one gigantic inbox. Without particular order, like grouping by email threads or grouping by date or grouping by anything. It had the folders listed too, with all the emails inside them as well, but no way to delete the email from the new giant inbox without deleting the said saved email from the folder as well. I had no idea how I was going to sort through all this crap. Happily it appeared that my contacts had transferred smoothly. Forging ahead, I pushed the tremendous email sorting task aside for later and put together a group email to send out. Only to discover that the new provider app did not actually have the ability to do so. When I had researched, all the information I read indicated that the app could send emails to groups. But no, I needed a second app for that!

   Not to be deterred, I loaded the second app on my favorite mobile device. Fortunately I had already spent countless hours cleaning up my phone so that I would have the memory to do so. I could now send the group email from my mobile device, but only after I recreated the groups that I wanted. There was no way to transfer my groups from my old provider contact list. 

   Needing to get some work done, I copied the text of my email, powered up a computer, pulled up the website for the old email provider, and logged in so I could send out the group message. To my surprise, I discovered that my old inbox was now filled with every email that I had ever read, sent or stored. Duplicates of the emails now in the inbox were also in their assigned folders. It looked just like my new email provider inbox.

I am convinced that Satan is an email program developer.

   With the help of my assistant, I began to cull through the giant inbox. It became evident that I was

Chirp, my assistant

keeping a great deal more email in folders than I was ever going to reference in the future. Thank heavens Chirp is good with the delete key. After hours of work and quite a bit of colorful language I am sure I have taught the bird to swear. Together we cleaned out all the unnecessary emails from all the inboxes and folders.

   Chirp reminded me that I was working toward minimalism, and encouraged me to carry this into my digital world. So I deleted some of the email addresses I had accumulated. Hopefully they are not connected to anything important. I am sure my future as a spy has been ruined, but my mental stability may have been saved. I was on the verge of removing all old addresses and changing to just using one new address when I remembered what happened when I changed to a new cell phone number. I gave my old cell number to my daughter and contacted everyone in my contact list with the change. Years later, some folks are STILL calling my old number.

   Having spent all my time this week managing my technology I am still trying to figure out how technology is a great time saving tool. I imagine there is an app for that, but it probably lacks the features that it needs to actually be effective.