According to my birth sign, I’m an organized individual. In my personal life, that’s true. I keep files with the names and phone numbers of friends long since dead, and my business calendars go as far back as the 80s. I’m not a pack rat. But I live in a museum of paper records, otherwise known as hardcopies. Over the years, I’m happy to say, I’ve developed an effective method for their storage.
It’s the electronic age that threatens to overwhelm me.
Like everyone else, I’m inundated with e-mails, blog responses, invitations and appeals that force me to hit the “save” button in the hope that one day, I’ll determine what to do with these messages. I never do. My in-box looks like a catalogue for the Smithsonian. Lately, I’ve been getting messages from my computer, begging me to archive my material. I would if I had the time. I don’t. So the messages keep piling up and, like the sorcerer’s apprentice, I don’t know how to cope with the overflow.
Yesterday I wanted to find an important contact. I looked in “Outreach,” and in “Media Outreach.” Then I asked myself why I needed both. I couldn’t decide so I let them be.
I never found the name I was searching for. It may not be my fault. I suspect some files get tired of hanging around and float up to the Cloud — which I imagine is e-file heaven.
To my writer friends and everyone else, please don’t do as I do. Set aside time to cull your electronic files. I know, you’d rather take a cold shower on a winter’s day. A writer, especially, wants to go about his business and not fiddle with records. But heed this warning. Otherwise you’ll waste time, as I did, fruitlessly searching for Gadot.
(Courtesy of moviecutlists.com)
