A Million Tiny Identity Crises
Do this activity at your own risk
If you want to have a million tiny identity crises, reorganize your email, reading a bunch of them along the way.
That makes me sound like a big masochist. I didn’t read every single one. There were many I skimmed to get the gist. So, instead of a big one, I’d say I’m just a little bit of a masochist.
I decided to undertake this huge email reorg and clean-out on a whim last week. There were a couple of reasons for this sudden inspiration. One is that it’s spring now and my spring cleaning switch flipped on. But only in the electronic realm. Not the physical realm. Another is that, per the recommendation of the Bureau of Next Steps, I’m trying to get various parts of my life in order to fully embark on new things. This activity felt like it would serve that.
The final and, let’s be honest, most likely reason I was hit with the urge to spend hours in my email is procrastination. Productive. Productive procrastination. But procrastination nonetheless. It’s hard to continue to approach job searching with never ending gusto while plagued with equally never ending high levels of cortisol in my system. After nearly a year of it, I’m worn out.
Okay, there is one more reason. It’s that I’m a pisces and I love to be a little bit sentimental. I have often spent too much time revisiting old things. Although, sometimes, when I’m expecting real life heart eye emojis from something, I just end up hurting myself instead. Ah, the wonders of a water sign (with a water sign rising). Oh, and mercury is retrograde and it came in hard this week. Also, the eclipse. All of those are factors. I think.
(Did I do it? Did I fulfill my millennial requirement to talk about these things?)
That’s the set-up. My general issue is that I’m already hyper-organized but, in things like email inboxes, hyper-organization can hurt more than help. The goal is to condense some folders (or labels, as gmail calls them) and also delete a bunch of detritus. By number of folders, I’m at a point where I’ve added way more folders than I’ve condensed. Which, of course I have. But, by sheer numbers, I’m doing well. I’ve taken some folders down from thousands of emails to a couple dozen. I’ve put a bunch of emails in the archive. And, for the most part, I started with the hardest (most masochist) folders first.
Part of the great thing about having been in therapy for the last five years—the number of years I only confirmed because of the email I had sent to a friend in 2019 that said something like, “P.S. Started therapy a few weeks ago. :)”—is that I’m more cognizant about how certain things will affect my mental state. The bad thing about having been in therapy for the last five years is that I’m more cognizant about how certain things will affect my mental state. No more charging forward, blindly waving my arms, and screaming, “This is not a problem! This does nothing to me! Let’s goooooooooo.” Now, it’s not blindly I charge forward. It is knowingly.
You know, you get what you pay for. Or, what you reorganize for? You pay for what you reorganize…for. The truth is what you predict. Self-fulfilling prophecies! Something along those lines.
Basically, this is where I confirm the set-up is a truth. There have been a million tiny identity crises. This week. That I knowingly brought on.
First of all, it impresses me just how much I used to email. I feel like that must have been my primary mode of communication? I couldn’t have been texting as much as I used to email, right? (Wrong, probably.) I’m not sure when I got my current gmail address but it was a long time ago and there were emails from before I graduated undergrad. That’s many years of excessive email communication. So many of them were setting plans or invites to readings or events that have long since passed. I loved to let people know I missed them or was thinking about them. (I still love to do that but my propensity to actually do it is a lot less than it used to be.) I was almost always sharing my playwriting or poems with people whether they wanted them or not.
The frequency of the emailing really decreased starting in March 2020. That’s not a surprise, of course. I mean, what was there, really, to be emailing about? We were all talking and not talking and having to process and avoiding processing all the same things. We didn’t need quick, pithy back-and-forths to know that was the case. The rapid decrease in the amount of emails around this time is not a good thing or a bad thing, I think. More of an observation. But, I will say, it was much easier for me to organize emails starting in 2020. So much less to go through.
Overall, there weren’t many surprises in any of the email folders I’ve been through. There were a few but not many. One was stumbling upon the screenplay I wrote in grad school that I had entirely forgotten I wrote. I didn’t remember that we had even written full screenplays. Yes, I did download it. No, at the time of writing this newsletter, I haven’t read it yet.
Not many surprises. But there were a whole lot of self-negotiations. Moments I didn’t want to revisit, painful things I try to keep out of my brain, names I didn’t want to see. It was a bit of a crapshoot whether I would open and read an email that would make me furrow my brow or immediately archive it. It depended on what type of tiny identity crisis I was in at the moment and whether I wanted to change course.
A lot of modern discourse around self-care, a lot of therapy (and pervasive mainstream therapy speak), a lot of the guidance my generation and younger has been given that our parents weren’t given, has to do with giving yourself grace. Being kind to yourself. Knowing that you did the best with the information you had at the time. Seeing and acknowledging how far you’ve come and how you’ve grown. All of that is important and true. Please do it.
Additionally, sometimes you’re just an asshole. Sometimes, you’re knowingly doing yourself a disservice. Sometimes, you are being petty and needy. Sometimes, you’re keeping stuff to yourself in ways that you know that you, personally, will be dealing with for a long time. Sometimes, it’s clear a little communication would go a long way. Sometimes, you do already have the tools to deal with something. But, you know, when you're wounded or in a bad place, sometimes it’s easier, feels more comfortable, to stay wounded or in that bad place.
Give yourself grace and kindness. And know that sometimes you’re knowingly doing things that are not great. Two things can be true at once.
Wait, three things. Sometimes, you are absolutely right about whatever. Don’t doubt it. It’s true.
Okay, a lot of things can be true at once. I’m going to stop this list now before things get out of hand. Now, where was I…?
Oh right, grace and kindness and assholery.
At least, that’s what I really noticed as I was going through my email.
There is nothing quite like an easily accessible, very clear timeline of the events and people of your life for the last fifteen years.
The mundanity of many of these back-and-forths spotlight the subtext. The emails where I was being terse and just kept on being terse. The emails where I made a joke that was harsh. The emails where I made a comment without thinking about it first. The emails where I was being needy. The emails where I was letting too much slide. The emails where I was pretending everything was okay. The emails where checking in was the exact right thing to do at that moment. The emails where making that introduction or connection was obviously going to lead to something great. The emails where friendships were taken to the next level. The emails where someone else was making me do all the work. The emails where I was making someone else do all the work. The emails that were facades. The emails that were truths. The emails that were pure information. The emails that were everything in between.
The Noticing inspires the identity crises. The Noticing solves the identity crises. The Noticing highlights the journey.
Some records are nice records. Like finding the first hint that a little connection would turn into a long term bond. Or finding evidence that a friend has been doing something for a long time and they’re just getting better and better at it. Or holding on to things that you can use as a reminder to your people who have been through so much, that they have, in fact, gotten through it. There are good reasons to go through all this, to see some of the records, to keep some of them.
In my life, these million tiny identity crises do, usually, turn out to have a purpose.
Was the purpose to find the meaning of life? Well, if the meaning of life was in one of the many emails that were simply, “Wanna see this show?” “Yes!” “When?” “This date.” “Drinks first?” “Yes!”, then I have deleted it and the meaning of life is lost to the ether that is the internet. (Huh. That joke feels more true than I meant it to.) So, I’m going to say no. That was not the purpose.
Was the purpose to reorganize my email so things are easier to find and I can make space for new things that are a-coming?
Yes. Sure. That’s the one.
Epilogue
Again, I don’t necessarily recommend embarking on this activity willy nilly, but if you do, can I make a suggestion? Make a folder where you keep the nice things people say to you about you. Look at it when you’re sad and/or feeling shitty about yourself. It’ll be there whenever you need it.
Oh, and put on the Les Mis soundtrack—stage, preferably. Any of those are likely to be better than the movie.—as you sort. It’s an epic background sure to cover the wide range of emotions you’ll feel.
No, YOU’VE been to the grocery store two times in the last three days and still have more things on your list.
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