Wednesday, 05 September 2001 | Capacity

A little over a year ago, I reached the maximum capacity of my 6-megabyte Yahoo! e-mail account. For a while I tried to maintain the 6 MB by deleting messages with attachments, impersonal e-mail, etc. But to quote a favorite former professor of mine, it was obvious to me that I was merely "shoveling sand at the beach," and that my efforts were only being negated by more incoming e-mail. So I broke down and paid $20 for 25 megabytes of space, figuring it was a small price to keep all of my letters (written to and by me), the words and thoughts that documented different periods of my life and the lives of the people with whom I correspond.

Well, it's a year later, and I'm again shoveling. Unfortunately, I can't buy my way out of it this time—25 MB is all the space Yahoo! offers. I've written Yahoo! and asked friends' advice in order to find an easy way out of this predicament, but it appears that that's not going to happen. It seems the only way to save my messages and reduce the size of my account (aside from downloading, which is even less efficient) is to open each e-mail individually, copy and paste each one into a word processing program, and then delete the e-mail.

I've been putting off this task for a long time, which, of course, is no surprise. I finally started the project today after deciding exactly how I was going to go about making the transfer. Not only has it not been as bad as I'd suspected, but it's actually been fun. I've started with the folder in which I keep Stef's messages, pacing myself, copying, pasting, formatting, and reading. It feels like I'm going through a box of old toys and books, items I'd forgotten existed but that look instantly familiar and warm, items that make my mind wander and sometimes make me laugh. Of course I can't just throw these things away. I can't understand how anyone could.

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Tomorrow I'm gone again. I'm going to Portland, Oregon until Tuesday. (Yes, it's my own fault that I'm broke.) This time I should have Internet access, so I hope to write more than I was able to last weekend.

Also: Happy Birthday, Dad!