Today, I have sent an e-mail.
In terms of comunication devices, emails often aren't the top of my "used most often" list, despite the fact that I have four currently active email addresses. Well, I say active. The longest-serving is my first email address from my initial venture into the world of internet, which I think was around December 2000? Gosh, how time does fly. My cute_username_897@hotmail.com was used well for the first four or five years of its life, what with the MSN craze, forwarding quizzes to and fro closest friends, corresponding with far-away faces or everyday school mates.
When UCAS came along, sophistication was the key - lil_minx23 or sweetiepie88 weren't going to wash with those admission people, methinks. Alors, a more appropriate fullnamesurname@hotmail.co.uk was created, for official use only. Now it harbours iTunes receipts and HMV offers, plus some recruitment newsletter I signed up for about two years ago for no particular reason. Who knows, maybe one day I'll find a perfect internship I've been looking for or a fantastic price for the album I've always wanted?
The other two addresses are the ones I use most often: the official university contact address and the address you will find as contact on this site. Most others I choose to netchat to has long since moved on to facebook, and so I have little use for the first email address I created all those moons ago. Now I check it every couple of months, and it yields no more than the Windows Live Newsletter, which I receive in two other places, and never read.
So why keep checking?
In a similar way to letters, emails hold a vast amount of memories. In addition, unlike letters, emails hold both the sent and received message - whole conversations, in fact. Trawling over emails from years, or even months, ago is a somewhat weird experience, as now I read it through from a different perspective, see myself from a another angle. It's strange, being able to note the wheres and whys of when we just stopped exchanging mail, or at least slowed down significantly. It's probably not a good idea to persue an activity like this, as it leaves too much room for analysis and contemplation. Anyway, if emails are all you've got to show of a friendship, then can it really be much of a relationship at all?
Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life
Today has taught me: it's probably best not to revisit the past, unless it could somehow help with the future.
On the jukebox: Snow Patrol ~ You Could Be Happy
In terms of comunication devices, emails often aren't the top of my "used most often" list, despite the fact that I have four currently active email addresses. Well, I say active. The longest-serving is my first email address from my initial venture into the world of internet, which I think was around December 2000? Gosh, how time does fly. My cute_username_897@hotmail.com was used well for the first four or five years of its life, what with the MSN craze, forwarding quizzes to and fro closest friends, corresponding with far-away faces or everyday school mates.
When UCAS came along, sophistication was the key - lil_minx23 or sweetiepie88 weren't going to wash with those admission people, methinks. Alors, a more appropriate fullnamesurname@hotmail.co.uk was created, for official use only. Now it harbours iTunes receipts and HMV offers, plus some recruitment newsletter I signed up for about two years ago for no particular reason. Who knows, maybe one day I'll find a perfect internship I've been looking for or a fantastic price for the album I've always wanted?
The other two addresses are the ones I use most often: the official university contact address and the address you will find as contact on this site. Most others I choose to netchat to has long since moved on to facebook, and so I have little use for the first email address I created all those moons ago. Now I check it every couple of months, and it yields no more than the Windows Live Newsletter, which I receive in two other places, and never read.
So why keep checking?
In a similar way to letters, emails hold a vast amount of memories. In addition, unlike letters, emails hold both the sent and received message - whole conversations, in fact. Trawling over emails from years, or even months, ago is a somewhat weird experience, as now I read it through from a different perspective, see myself from a another angle. It's strange, being able to note the wheres and whys of when we just stopped exchanging mail, or at least slowed down significantly. It's probably not a good idea to persue an activity like this, as it leaves too much room for analysis and contemplation. Anyway, if emails are all you've got to show of a friendship, then can it really be much of a relationship at all?
Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life
Today has taught me: it's probably best not to revisit the past, unless it could somehow help with the future.
Yaay! Everyone's coming back out of the woodwork!
ReplyDeleteI like to re-read old emails to remember the past, but they always make me feel odd- old emotions brought to the forefront leave me feeling raw again.
As does that song.
Totally agree with both of you. I like to re-read emails but they shock me with how powerful those old memories still are, and for a few odd minutes I'm sixteen or seventeen all over again. Bittersweet.
ReplyDeleteOld emails and archive MSN conversations. It's scary how recent a lot of them seem!
ReplyDeleteI applied to university with myslightlyoddemail@hotmail.co.uk - it didn't even occur to me to get something slightly more formal. One Cambridge admissions tutor even sent a reply to a enquiry starting "Dear abbreviatedformofmyslightlyoddemail", which I found wonderfully endearing, especially after I discovered that he was in fact a member of the Zoology department! I still enjoy giving it out when asked, and watching whoever's filling in the form try to keep a straight face :-)
CVs and 'proper stuff' have alas now reverted to myusername@durham.ac.uk . Shame, really...
I don't think I've ever read back over any meaningful emails, probably because something in me doesn't want to relive how I was feeling at that time.
ReplyDeleteMy very first email address demonstrates my utter naivety "frozenreefer"...at the time I was, if I remember rightly, 13 maybe 14 and had no idea quite what a 'reefer' was!
Like others I used my Uni email for offical and proper 'stuff' the email I use mostly now isn't particularly offensive though I imagine I should change it when I decide to grow up properly.
It's curiosity, innit ;o)
xxxx