Abstention

Whenever I'm at home to do my internet surfing, I tend to automatically type addresses that I regularly visit.

I suppose it's habit or just a way to rationalize my own sense of productivity ... but one of those addresses I do type is my work email.

I guess beyond "feeling" productive when I see that I have new mail to read is a longing for a sense of "connection" where my input matters with my reply or where my awareness of disseminated information from the powers-that-be means that I am "in the loop" of something bigger than my day-to-day tasks at work.

However, once in a while, I get emails which send gut-level, blood curling, and heartbeat spiking reactions from me; regretting WHY I bothered checking work emails for things that, in the grand scheme of things, can wait.

And whenever these visceral reactions happen to me, which are not often but when they hit, they HIT, it's an effort to make such reactions NOT ruin the rest of my day.

I think it's harder when I have no one with whom to readily vent or distract me away from stressful times, including nerve-triggering emails. Sure, I can do my own distractions by myself but that can only go so far.

So ... I will try a new rule to NOT check emails after I leave the office. It's a discipline of resolve and self-control. Hopefully, this abstention will create clearer boundaries between my work and personal life.

Sure, emails are just letters and strings of words whose impact is in the eye and interpretation of the reader.

Yet, it's foolish to deny a meaning's neutrality ... for either the sender or receiver.

I think that's what's tricky about human communications.

I do not need to care or invest too much.

But why do I?