Drafts Folder

Lately, I'm been going through a lot of things and cleaning out a lot of things.

I've already been through every room in my house.  Given away about 15 bags of clothing, moved things to their proper location in the house, got the garage organized, going through all my papers in the filing cabinets, and even organized the dreaded "junk drawer" one Friday night:

The other thing I'm doing is electronic cleaning.  I keep all emails in my inbox if there is some action needed.  So, deleting an email is something I can do at any time, but I am notorious for not filing emails right away.  So, the inbox just keeps filling up over into the next internet page of the email until I finally get around to either reading an article someone sent me, filing the email, responding to someone, checking out a link, whatever.

(and this is just my personal email I'm referring to, not my work email that I have the same issue with lol.)

And now, I send reminders to my email.  I actually love doing this because it helps me not lose my thoughts or helps me remember things I need to do (I use Do Note from IFTTT to easily email myself).  So, I keep the email reminder unread and it stays bright in my inbox as a reminder this is an action I need to do something with.  Do you think this helps?  No, not at all.  Now the "unread" email number just climbs up, too.  lol.

So, as I was cleaning my email inbox, I noticed my DRAFTS folder.  Why THE HELL do I have over 400 emails in my drafts folder?

So, I started to go through them since I'm on this cleaning spree.

I found addresses and phone numbers.  To who?  I don't know.  I guess at some point I would need to write down a number or address, put it in an email but not email it - just "SAVE" it and then it stayed in my drafts folder.

I also have those type of letters/emails you write that you are NEVER suppose to push the send button on.  You know, if someone really upsets you, you are suppose to write down your thoughts.  But you never actually send that email.  You are just getting the anger out of you.  Further, if something is on your mind you can't stop thinking about, then you write those thoughts down so you can then shove them away from your brain.  You still have the information you were thinking about, but it's now off your mind.

Kinda like they say if you are laying in bed thinking of the things you are suppose to do the next day, you then write them down.  That allows you to fall asleep because you are no longer thinking about your to-do list, and it's captured in writing (this works btw).

Same principle.

So, some of these "letters" were my thoughts after breakups, or why a guy was an ass, or why I was upset with a friend.  It was pretty weird to run across some of those - some were over 7 years old.  DELETE.

I also have saved chat discussions with friends because of advice they gave me.  Tidbits of information that I copied into a draft so I wouldn't forget, and maybe refer to if I needed a peptalk.  Back then, Chats weren't saved, so I had to copy and paste them.  Yet, there it all sat in a DRAFT email waiting to be taken care of somehow.  

I also of course have lots of links to articles (many links do not work now) and prolly over 100 items to blog about (holy cow).

I found this that I wasn't suppose to forget from 2008:

amboyna burl
black palm

Yep, that's all it said.  I guess that's when I was looking up wood for the cue I was designing.

How about this nugget:

A draft letter I wrote for an ex to his biological Dad he never met (who he found and they now visit each other and are close).

I also found a lot of quotes I liked at some point in time, that I guess I was going to blog about or felt close to at the moment in that place in my life.  Nowadays, I save things in an app called Evernote because I can save it on my phone and pull it up on my computer - very handy actually.  Of course I realize now I'm just replacing one electronic means of hoarding with another.  lol.

I have my DRAFT folder down to 178 drafts now!  After a while I get burned out filing or trying to figure out what to do with them.  Because let's be honest, if I want to SAVE what the draft, then I have to EMAIL it to myself.  And then it's sitting in my email inbox unread, just piling up with the others I'm trying to clear out lol.  Because I still need to do something with it - blog about it or file it or whatever.

OMG it's like a vicious circle! 

Oh geeeeee.....  lol