^~~That Just Means That I Would Rather Not^~~

I'd like to apologize to everyone who has been waiting for me to respond to private emails, and indeed some have been waiting for an exorbitant length of time. It's something of which I've become all too aware lately, that I dread writing private emails. This has nothing to do with becoming anti-social, and it has only a little to do with the good Doctor's recent tendency toward (mmmmm) apathy. But individual emails now seem to me more than a bit of a pain the ass because of the professional uses of email. By the time I sort through my 'must answer' email (the stuff relating to work, to my students, to keeping my head generally afloat in the world), I'm exhausted and P.O.'ed, because those emails tend so often to be repetitions of the same old things -- and answers to questions most people could find out for themselves rather than running straight to me. "It's not righteous indignation," the Man sings, "that makes me complain / It's the fact that I always have to explain." Uggidy ugh ugh ugh.

Unfortunately, this ends up making me delay my private correspondence, and we all know what happens when we delay something longer than we like-- we end up dreading catching up because that whole process will involve the inevitable and tiring self-explanations and apologies in addition to the correspondence itself. Worse, the delay ends up taking the initial correspondence out of its original (and immediate) context. The end result: email itself becomes laborious in its nature, more than it really should be.

The other result is this, that blogging becomes preferrable-- the broad saying of things that doesn't so much require answers as it requires common address. As much as it may seem like blogging is as much work as, or as time-consuming, as email, the fact is rather the opposite. Things I'm sure would be different if the times hadn't made email so crucial to so many of our professional lives, but there it is... So, if you've sent me an email and are waiting for a response, please be patient; I'll get it all done eventually-- or, rather, I'll get caught up on the current backlog at the sacrifice of the coming lot, which will become another backlog, which I'll then catch up, at the sacrifice of.... You know how the cycle goes...

*Shrug* My apologies to those waiting, all of whom must feel like Enron creditors.