I wiped almost a thousand people from my life today in less than two hours.
To be fair, many of them were 'bots, duplicates and other sync-rot from Google Contacts and Address Book. But a fair number were people, actual human beings, whom I've met along the way, one way or another, and either lost touch with or wanted to lose touch with, but didn't have the nerve to delete.
Pruning one's address book or Rolodex back in the hard-copy days could be a melancholy affair. Did you cross out that dead (or dead-to-you) person, or let it ride? Did you pull the little white cards from their metal (or later, plastic) spools, conceding defeat, acknowledging opportunities abandoned and hills not conquered? Or did you leave them in there thinking "Maybe...maybe this year I'll go back and reconnect with Ken over at Spacely Sprockets?"
Today, it seems easier but really, is it? The select/delete action is so simple, but so brutal. Just like that, these people and the promises those relationships once held are gone forever, again and again and again. Almost 1,000 of them, in less than 120 minutes. For every one that was a relief to let go of (and trust me, the photo exercise from Brooks' workshop primed me for some serious eradication action), there were 10 that were harder, and one or two that made me downright melancholy. Decluttering photos made me feel lighter; decluttering my address book just made me feel that much closer to death.
Okay, it also made me feel like a loser. When I'd see all the information I'd plugged into some of these entries, contacts that I added to be a friend or opportunity collector more than anything else, I felt like there was a big, red "L" stamped on my forehead. Talk about sunk costs! These entries represented hours and hours of my life I'll never get back: hours I could have put into making something or reading something or just actually being with someone.
We have versions of The Container Store and IKEA's excellent storage solution porn aids all around us. It is so much easier to feel virtuous rearranging and categorizing than it is to take a cold, hard look at what we legitimately have at our disposal that is of utility.
I'll talk more about my criteria for cutting (and keeping) later on, in a screencast showing how I organize my contact management system (if you can call Address Book that without laughing).
In the meantime, may I repeat my mantra of the past almost-three weeks: Let go, let go, let go...
xxx
c
Image by Sreejith K. via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.