i am neurotic.

Whenever I reply to an e-mail, I always erase the original message that automatically gets copied into my message when I hit “reply.” I don’t know why. Also, I have a horrible memory, so when I get a reply to an e-mail that doesn’t have my original message, I forget what I said and get annoyed and need to go find the sent message so I remember what the reply is regarding. But I still always erase it before I send it.

I work in an office and I check my personal email at least once every minute, sometimes less than that. When there are no new messages I feel sad, but as soon as I see that “(1)” next to my Inbox I am ecstatic. I feel like I just got a birthday present. But as soon as I’ve read it or if it’s spam I immediately go back to feeling sad and unloved, for real. It makes me feel ill sometimes.

I always have to read my email from the bottom of the list up. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a forward, a shipping confirmation, or a personal correspondence. The only exception is that if I get an email I’m really, really looking forward to, I will save that one for last. No matter how hurried I am, I still click on everything. I cannot leave anything in bold, even if I know it’s something I don’t care about. If it’s a notification email letting me know that someone has contacted me through another avenue, I will quickly click on it but intentionally avert my eyes to something else so I won’t spoil the message for myself before I get to where it’s originally been sent. I do this so I won’t accidentally leave it unread and think someone’s contacted me again later. It’s disappointing.

Every time I check my spam box on gmail, the link at the top of my email gives me some kind of article or recipe about SPAM, you know, the disgusting food we used to joke about as kids?  For some reason I cannot STAND this (especially the recipes) and I immediately have to refresh the page to get a link more tailored to my liking.

When I send an e-mail I always have to go into the Sent Items and re-read the message I just sent, just to reassure myself that it still reads the way it did when I sent it a few seconds earlier.

After sending an important business email I have to, immediately, read my saved copy and clack my teeth together at the end of the first sentence and nod my head, then read it again clacking twice, finishing with a third pass with 3 clacks. Otherwise, panic attacks begin.

Whenever I send an e-mail I have to wish it godspeed or good luck, aloud, because I fear if I don’t that it will get lost in cyberspace. Bonne chance to this neurosis!

If I’m writing an email and in the middle of it a new email comes, in my head, that means that I have to re-write it all over again because something is wrong. Since I get hundreds of emails everyday, you can imagine that takes a while.

Every morning at work I have to check my email. This isn’t too unusual, but if there is no email I have to send one to myself.  I have to send and receive this email before I can do any work that day.

i cannot have unread email messages, even in my spam folder. i continue to mark items in my inbox as spam even though i know i will read them when they come in again all filtered as spam. before i read them, i just need them to go into the spam folder where they belong.