Vacation usually means playing catch up at some point. If you were not on a “staycation” that means you were likely disconnected from your normal routine to some degree. As such, there will be at the very least a little catch up when you get home. For me, there was a TON of catch up since I was only able to connect electronically on a limited basis – partly because that was all that was available and partially because it was a self-imposed disconnect.

Anyway, catch up usually involves junk mail. TONS and tons of junk mail. Why is there so much of this crap?

It comes in the very real form of physical junk mail in the mailbox. Stacks and stacks of credit card offers, political campaign ads, grocery store ads, coupon packets, etc etc etc. I think after five days of being gone, I kept seven pieces of real mail (as in something I needed or wanted) out of about 50 items. At least junk mail delivered in this manner has been reduced to some degree (I swear junk mail is the only thing keeping the USPS afloat, but that is a discussion for another day).

Then there is the electronic junk mail – at home and at work. Again, there has been a reduction of this blight since filters are getting better, but there is still a lot that makes it through. Work email literally took me TWO HOURS to get through! Most of it was dumb crap my co-workers feel the need to share with everyone in the office, but how do you know for sure unless you open it up and look? My three home email accounts, because of limited connectivity, were a little better. I was able to filter some of the junk out before I even got home. But, that still means an hour going through the necessary stuff and deleting the rest. (Three, you ask? Yes, one for main use and two for the “junk” you get from stores and memberships and the like.) I don’t delete emails until I have taken action in relation to it, so while I can sift through most of it there is that follow up that needs to be done for each one I felt the need to keep for one reason or another. That for another day…

Can people just stop talking to me? How about you stop sending me crap too?