Inbox Overwhelm

...and Finding Yourself in the Overflow

I started out with good intentions: clear the inbox and get organised. But somewhere in between deleting the ‘noise’ and responding to the urgent, I stumbled across something unexpected. A single line in one of the emails caught me off guard—and it turned out to be just what I needed.

Listen in here or read the text below :-)

Hello,

Pour yourself a cuppa and settle on in.

I’m enjoying a nice zingy ginger tea today — very refreshing — with a generously sized gluten free melting moment on the side!

I do have to apologise, though. This little chat isn’t really about books or writing or anything like that. It’s really just a soliloquy about life, but it does have some hints on dealing with an overwhelming inbox and a tiny piece of life advice from someone who is slowly coming into her wisdom as she embraces the crone (ie. me).

I haven’t been writing. Or making art. If you follow my scribbles on any social platform, you’ve probably gathered that I’ve been wintering. I am wintering. A quiet time for rest and recovery. I’m not very good at it. I am quickly bored with not doing anything and I’m truly impatient with recovery taking time. Creative block is not my issue. Being unwell is. It chews through my concentration and demands all my attention on looking up new ways to get better, faster. I understand why vulnerable people fall for quack remedies and half-arsed get-well-quick schemes.

I still don’t know why I am suffering the symptoms I’m suffering. All the tests are coming back not just clear, but really clear. I’m well. But I’m not.

Anyway, this is not what I want to write about. Other than to say, I’m increasingly coming to believe that this is my body telling me off for the life stresses I’ve been navigating for the last few years. I need to tell my body it’s okay, we’ll get through this, and to stand down.

Winter.

I need to know how to winter.

So…

I told myself that I would take the time down the coast to do the workshop (a couple of weeks ago) as a holiday, a rest. A time to winter.

Okay, yes, I did the workshop – yes, work, but it gave me a nice shot of dopamine, the reward for achieving a goal, plus I love to teach, I love connecting with people, I love giving.

In fact, I had a lovely few days, resting.

I only glanced at my emails and socials to make sure nothing important I needed to know about was going down, I let the lovely person who I was staying with pamper me and do all the work. I sat around chatting and reading and watching TV. I went out for short strolls in beautiful places. I ate lovely, yummy food.

I drove home, glowing.

And then…

…I sat down at my computer the next morning and paled when I saw the vast number of emails sitting there, frowning at me, demanding attention. Telling me off for ignoring them for the best part of a week.

It has taken me this long to get on top of them.

Ten days.

I wasn’t even vaguely making headway until I came up with a system. My first thing was to go through and prioritise, deleting all the noise, the ones that weren’t important (this was actually really tricky because, as well as the ones that I delete as a matter of course, there were many that, under normal circumstances, I would at least have glanced at*). I – sadly – even made the decision to opt out of the wild journalling course I’d started – there was just no way I could catch up on all the prompts.

* Sorry to all those whose blogs and essays just went by the wayside.

Having done this, I started every day by going through new emails with the same tough stance.

I dealt straight away with anything important, eg:

• messages from the bookshop and schools where I will be doing presentations;

• responses to workshop participants getting on to me about a question they had;

• bills (erk!) ;

• bookings for my manuscript assessment services*;

*thank you to the people who have contacted me about my birthday offer**. I think I’ve got back to all of you now.

**I still have a couple of places — check my offer here if you haven’t already seen it.

• and adding information to a family history that my brothers and I are compiling.

All of it bit by bit, one after the other, et cetera, et cetera (imagine that last bit in the voice of Yul Brynner in The King and I).

Then I started at the bottom/oldest of my unread emails, taking on five at a time.

And sticking to it.

Five.

Just five.

Regardless of whether, having opened it, I glanced (possibly liked) and closed it, or whether it triggered a job – something I had to do in response. Then I would close my email server and walk away, do something else.

By doing this, it wasn’t too overwhelming. I could do five. Easy.

It was tedious, but this morning I got there. From here onwards, I only have each day’s new emails to deal with.

Here’s my process pulled together as 10 quick(ish) tips for the (slightly) more visually oriented:

But in this trawl through the overwhelm, not all were pedestrian, business-y type things I focused on.

Some just called to me with their title or subject*.

*Note to self: get better at titles.

Some of those have been useful – interesting:

• discovering the debut picture book launched by someone I worked with on some of her junior fiction in the last couple of years, reviewed by another Substacker;

• a fascinating piece by someone writing a parenting memoir (not a how-to, a memoir, a book about surviving getting it wrong sometimes – and we all do) recommended as part of a how-to-get-Substack-right piece;

• and a question about reunion.

This last one made me stop and think:

If you had a reunion with your younger self, where would you meet and what would you talk about?

The younger self I would most like to meet would be in her teens. She would be sitting on a headland after a storm, watching the waves crashing on the beach below and the rain driving across the horizon. She would be a little overwhelmed with her present and so unsure about her future.

I would just like to sit beside her in silence. I would like to watch the power of nature playing out around me again. I would like to breathe in the sea air and feel the wind on my face. I would like to hold her hand and share that time, and, as we stand up to go, our bums wet from sitting on the soggy grass, I would like to whisper: be yourself, whatever you do will be the right thing.

She has so many choices in front of her. Some will be good; some will be less good. But all will be made to the best of her ability.

I’ve agonised over so many choices over the years, weighing the pros and cons.

Oh, if only I could tell my younger self to just go with her instincts and leave the worry behind.

That the important thing is to be herself.

I have to admit I don’t really know who I am now. And I wonder if whispering to my younger self on that headland would change anything, anyway.

But I can whisper to myself, now.

And I can whisper to you.

Be yourself, whatever you do will be the right thing

Not everything will work out, I can promise you that. But have confidence in yourself. Breathe in the sea air and feel the wind on your face.

And Be You.

What about you? If you had a reunion* with your younger self, where would you meet and what would you talk about?

*If you want to read more about Reunion, this was this week’s journalling prompt from Beth Kempton in her SoulCircle, her subscription group at SoulStack.

Pop your answer in the comments. I’d love to hear what you’d have to say.

‘til next time, and wishing you a Happy Easter with just the right amount of chocolate, possibly washed down with a nice cup of tea – or coffee – or whatever it is that you like to sip on,