My email apology

I am an awful email friend. I have been rewarding my friends and contacts with self-indulgent tomes in response to their short notes. I respond to a few-line email checking in, asking a question, or exchanging a how-do-ya-do? with lengthy rambling paragraphs creating 1000-word emails five times the length of the original. I picture people receiving my emails, sighing, and shutting their laptops. I might have to start sending emails with a calendar appointment so people can figure out when they'll have time to read them. I am dumping burdens on my friends with a simple click of "Send" and it can only mean one thing: I have too much to say.

My most pronounced writing sin has alwasy been verbosity - using 4 words instead of the perfect 1 - and my years steeped in academic prose only fed that word addiction. I'm not saying I'll do a great job of avoiding that tendency here, but I do know that these words need to go somewhere, and my emails are too damn long.

And so I am revisiting this more appropriate location for me to indulgently ramble and opine, wax and wane nostalgic. In my 1300-word response to a recent 260-word email from my graduate advisor, I commented that my most motivating reason to write is when something irritates me enough that I want to rant about it publicly. I'm a good ranter - I know to enhance my credibility with a touch of self-deprecation, I know to give the opposing viewpoint just enough attention to appear well-informed, and I know in the end the best rants are the ones that are more full of humor than anger. Perhaps we can share some of those rants together here and my spirited indignation at the serious and the mundane can entertain us all - and save my dear email friends from a dire inbox fate.