What's Wrong With Email Anyway?

Nobody writes personal emails anymore. When was the last time you received an intimate email from a friend or acquaintance? When was the last time you wrote one yourself?

These days, most email we receive are forwarded messages. They're either jokes, pictures, links to videos or chain letters. Seems to be no one has the time to write real messages. We hardly even have time to read them when we get 'em. We've become a jaded society that's too busy to communicate. We resort to sending one liners through Instant Messenger (IM) programs. Some even go invisible in these IM chat software so they won't be seen as online and won't be disturbed.

I remember the first time I went online on the internet. I was ecstatic. It was slow. I was on dial-up. Man those modems were noisy. Homepages still used those clumsy animated gifs and were always 'under construction' (with the animated construction gif of course). The first thing I did was email all my friends. I essentially wrote to everyone I knew who had an email address. Some replied. I always excitedly wrote back. I emailed individual Christmas and New Year messages. I wrote my friends when I had a problem. I shared my secrets, and hopes, and pain. We talked like human beings. All of this through the wonders of email. Life was good.

Then along the way something went wrong. We tired of sending emails. We boasted that we got bombarded with too much emails. Sorry too busy to reply. Too busy to write. Worse, some unscrupulous sites started sending out spam. These malicious messages had links to viruses and bad sites. We became wary of email. We started avoiding them. They were left unread, unwritten. The magic was gone.

It became out of fashion to write personal messages via email. Who has the time to write them? Who has the time to communicate? And if you're one of the few who still send hand typed messages, you've probably got too much time on your hands. Shame on you, don't you have more important things to do?

I am guilty of this myself. The few times I would actually get a personal email I would let it lapse. Days, sometimes weeks would go by without my answering them. I was too "busy" to do what was really important.

It's time to bring back the glory of email. Go back to the time you first went online - when you actually wrote stuff from the heart. My promise to you is I will make time to do the important personal stuff. I will not let personal emails lapse without a thoughtful and caring reply. And most importantly take the time to write new ones. Take care and keep writing.