Write you are…

I think I would find it easier to resist the need to constantly check my email if it didn’t rapidly fill up with random crap on a daily basis. Which means I have to spend a long time deleting the useless emails so I can find the important ones buried underneath. I can’t make an email rule for something as intangible as “please delete email I would delete myself if I looked at it, but not anything I wouldn’t”.

I’ve heard people talk about automating the process of filtering out news and information but I don’t like that idea, especially not with email. So instead I’ve been going to the source and asking people to remove me from their mailing lists. I’ve sent some very polite messages explaining I am trying to cut down on email, and I don’t tend to find I can use the stuff they send me, so can they just… not? Most people were happy to take me off – no point mailing someone who doesn’t appreciate it – but a few protested.

Like the person who kept emailing links to his blog. I wrote to him and said thanks but if I want to read a blog I can bookmark it myself so could he stop, as I don’t quite understand why he’s sending them to me. “Probably because you’re a freelance journalist!” came the answer. Huh? When I queried further he said he “thought there was newsworthy stuff”. Maybe there is. But it’s in an area I barely cover and it’s already on the internet. So I don’t know what on earth I’m supposed to do with it.

Next up: someone who kept sending me emails about tech stuff, most of it fairly dull sounding. When I wrote to this PR and said, look, I’m trying to cut down on the email deluge and to be honest I don’t read yours, the reply was: “I thought you were writing about tech? Aren’t you?” Well, aside from the fact that my main tech writing was for Technology Guardian, which closed months ago (thanks for the reminder), the fact I sometimes write about a subject that broad does not mean I’ll automatically find their emails interesting or useful (they were neither).

(Still doesn’t beat the best response I ever got to a polite “Please take me off this list, I don’t write about X.” The reply said they didn’t have time to check out each person they emailed and they paid Gorkana a lot of money for these lists. Spot the flaw in that one.)

Then I started contacting household and financial providers. I was thinking I’d need to make sure they didn’t try to email or secure message me during May. No problems with my internet provider, Be, or my bank. They understood the concept of phoning instead of emailing.

But when I messaged my credit card company to tell them that I wouldn’t be picking up emails or secure messages in May, they wrote back to say they don’t send account info by email but they do communicate with me that way as email and secure message are their “primary form of communication”. So I had to write back and say that’s nice, but I am asking you to not use those as your primary form of communication, as I won’t have internet access, so it won’t be my primary form of receiving them, now will it.

BT couldn’t grasp the situation at all. I explained – via live chat, as I couldn’t find an option to email without lying about what I wanted and didn’t feel like waiting on hold on the phone – that I would not be using email in May. Could they please send any correspondence by post, or phone me. Well why did I think they would contact me about my account, they asked, rather snootily, as if I thought myself excessively important. So I suggested they have a look at the renewal date. It’s in June. May is exactly when they will be contacting me.

Once they figured that out, they said they’d be sending me renewal emails about current offers during the month of May. Right, say I, and I will not be using the internet in the month of May, so I won’t get them. Can you post the information to me, please? Or phone me and tell me what they are? Apparently not. First the advisor said he’d need to turn paper billing back on, losing me my paperless billing discount. Stop right there, I don’t want a paper bill, I said, I just want the content you are going to email to me about my renewal and I don’t want to pay extra just so I can receive it. Then he said he could stop the contract renewal. Again I explained I just wanted information about renewal offers by another medium. Like a telephone. Which, y’know, is something BT are quite familiar with. After a further onslaught of confusing babble I am none the wiser. I ended up saying I’d phone them in May and giving up.

Before I go mad, that is. I was already thinking about this when I read these pieces by Rachel Cooke and Mark Hooper. I’m taking May off. No work. No writing. No internet. No computer, even.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the web and a lot of my work is for online these days. But I let it seep into my precious spare time, far too much. (You may think freelancers have lots of spare time. But nobody pays for it. So if anything, I’m very bad at taking time off.) I don’t need to be online so much.

I wouldn’t want to ditch mobile internet, mainly because I need to be able to pick up emails from editors. Being able to do that on my phone frees me to leave the house without carting a laptop around, so I can answer urgent questions, pick up commissions etc. Plus I can surf the net on long train journeys, and access it at my parents’ (internet-less) house. But do I really need to check email and Twitter during a ten-minute train journey?

My online/offline balance is… well, it’s not balanced. You’d expect a freelancer to be a bit glued to their email, but I really need to take a step back. Some would say: just use the net less, then. Which would be unhelpful and pointless. Being a freelance journalist would be impossible without email and the web, even if I didn’t build some of my own web features (I need written confirmation of commissions and fees, for starters).

What I’m trying to do is break my behaviour patterns and learn better ones. First off, I’ve been decluttering. NewsFox has really helped with this. I no longer check umpteen feeds just-in-case-something-new-appeared as I can trust it’s being found, will be kept until I read it and will then auto-delete. I know RSS readers are hardly revelatory but it has taken me ages to find one I like or to realise how much time it could save me. And I’ve set it to only refresh itself once every two hours so it’s not a constant distraction.

I have also spring-cleaned my email (down from using 15% of my Gmail storage to 4%), Facebook messages, Facebook friends, Facebook application permissions, tweets, people I follow on Twitter, internet bookmarks, the documents on my PC… the list goes on. If I deleted anything important I will just have to ask someone. I’ve stopped running my inbox in the background all the time, too. Instead of just deleting emails I don’t want, I’ve been unsubscribing from all the newsletters I don’t read or want, which is about 99% of them, and emailing PRs to ask them to remove me from irrelevant mailing lists.

And in May, I’m switching off. I’m going to remove my mobile internet settings and get my boyfriend to hide my laptop. And then I’m going to have a proper, lovely, blissful break and remember what it’s like not to be switched on all the time. I did think about letting myself use iTunes or the Picturehouse website or my internet banking or… but I think it has to be all or nothing. I don’t need to do my banking online, I can go to a bank or just phone them up. I can phone the cinema, or look in the leaflet they send me every month.If I “just look at one thing” it will be the beginning of the end.