Self-Imposed Complexity

I have a complex e-mail situation these days. Let me explain:

My e-mail addresses:  Over the last 15 years of computing, I’ve amassed a few.

A.  My Juno E-Mail – This is the first one I had. I got Juno when Juno was a direct-dial-up, no internet e-mail. I got it before I had internet at home. I don’t use it, but I check it every six months or so, just to keep it active.
B.  My ISP-Centric E-Mail – This has changed over the years as my ISPs have changed. Right now, I think I’m on my third ISP, therefore my third addy. Good thing about these is that they disappear when you close your account.
C.  My Second ISP-Centric E-mail – I set this one up because I could and I thought that setting up a business-themed e-mail address would cause my ideas of starting a media company would take off without a push. Didn’t happen yet.
D.  My G-Mail Account – When Google started their e-mail thing, I had to get on the bandwagon, so I did with this address and…
E.  My Second G-Mail Account – (see letter “c” above).
F.  My Yahoo Mail Account – I just logged into it and found it was in a state of “inactivation”. I reactivated it for reasons I don’t fully understand myself, except that I need it to access a Yahoo group our church set up.
G.  My Work E-Mail Accounts -  There are three:

1. My Primary Work Account – This is the one I get all my important e-mail through.
2. The “Info” Account – A generic work account to which certain generic things are mailed.
3. The “Admin” Account – Being the System Administrator for our e-mail system, I need this one for other reasons I don’t fully understand. I don’t remember getting any messages via this account yet.

H.  My BlackBerry Account – This is the newest of the brood. I created this to keep my more permanent (and more important) e-mail addresses off of any AT&T servers. I forward copies of my work e-mail to it.

I tell this only to illustrate how complicated I’ve made my life. I have to remember addresses and passwords. If you don’t know it already, you’ll soon find out that the older you get, the more you have to remember, and the harder the task becomes. I’ve employed the assistance of a password keeper to help me keep track of all the passwords I’ve collected. And if e-mail addresses weren’t bad enough, anything you do online requires you to login with a username and password, so you have to keep up with those, too.

Reflecting on all of this has shown me that complexity does not necessarily enrich one’s life. Some think that running to and fro, having your day scheduled to one notch past the hilt, and not having any margin in your life is desirable because it shows how important or how popular you are, as if those are related. That complexity doesn’t enrich seems simply obvious, however if it is as true as it is obvious, why do we disregard the notion and continue to complicate our lives? I suppose we feel it necessary to complicate our lives, since this is the most complicated, information saturated age ever. Each of our lives prove it to be untrue, though. Having more to do, being responsible for more things, and having more e-mail addresses than we need brings nothing into our lives except more stress and confusion. We need to lighten up.

To follow my own advice, I will start by deactivating one e-mail address. Address "C" will be the first to go.