Inundated, Overpowered and Annoyed

Do you ever review your personal email account and feel inundated, overpowered and finally just plain annoyed?  I sometimes wonder how on earth I ended up getting on mailing lists.  It’s bad enough to have nightly soliciting phone calls and junk mail in the regular mail but when you start being invaded electronically it just becomes too much.  I’ve been watching the program “Person of Interest” regularly and if we aren’t already in the throes of electronic surveillance I think we are at least on the cusp.

I recently took a training course at work that showed me how to manage my inbox at work, moving items into tasks and it has helped a lot, but somehow I find the idea of having to “task” myself at home just plain wrong.  I don’t want my home life to turn into another job, at least not when it is tedious.

Most of the time I feel as though I am up to the challenge in learning new things but lately I feel that the electronic age is starting to overpower me rather than helping me make life easier.  As my late boss used to say “it’s become a case of the tail wagging the dog”.

Driving in to work this morning the news told me that while it’s time to get the taxes in it’s also a time to watch for scam artists trying to obtain your personal information.  My goodness, isn’t it dreadful that every where you turn you have to be vigilant because there’s some electronic bandit out to get you?  I don’t want to sound old but do you remember the good old days where you just had to be afraid of a purse snatcher if you were in a parking lot one dark night? The solution – don’t be in a parking lot on a dark night!  Now the solution seems to be “don’t enter the 21^st century except at your own peril”. 

Paranoia and irritation certainly does take the fun out of innovation.

The Spring That Never Was

“Once upon the time there was a season called Spring.  It used to come in softly with a little warm breeze sweeping down from the mountain tops, usually during the last night of March.  In the morning there would be a soft dew rather than frost and by the end of the day a gentle rain would patter down on the brown grass.  Within a few days the grass would turn green, daffodils and tulips would emerge from the dark brown soil which was now warm to the touch.  All birds, big and small, would tweet as they fluttered from tree to tree, building their own individual little nests.  By the end of April the countryside would be buzzing with bees, flowers wild and wonderful would break up the green of the grass and goodness, children would be running around on streets, swinging in the park, climbing up the welcoming tree branches.

Oh stop, is this a fairy tale from Hans Christian Andersen?  Is it really true that once there was something called Spring?

Yes, Virginia, there was a Spring, but it has gone the way of the do-do bird and the mammoth.  We don’t know why exactly, some say that Mother Nature became angry with Man, who assumed to know better than she how to manage nature.  Now, we live in a world of brown, ice, fog and snow.

Let that be a lesson to you.”

Yes, it is a grim day in mid-April with snow, snow and more snow.