Okay, I have to admit it, I can't deny it any longer. I've been using my work email address for personal use. It's just that the webmail system was so much better than anything offered out there and I didn't have to worry about spyware downloading onto my computer (if you have Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail, you might want to download Spybot and get rid of some of the stuff that just checking your email has done to your computer). And then Mackenzie offered up Gmail invites just when I needed one. (And let me tell you, Gmail is pretty awesome.)
Just yesterday I was offered a job at the National Archives Museum in DC. I'm very excited. Though I will tell you that I won't be archiving any time soon. I'll be showing people around the museum and generally just walking up to people and asking them if they like what they're seeing...uh...maybe I should just stick to showing people the museum. It's really cool because I get to get a little closer to my dream job.
The only problem with that is that I have to leave the job I'm in. And as you might have guessed, I have to give up my email address (of course). So let me ask you, why is it that changing your email address with your friends and loved ones is so much harder than anything else? I've tried to do this before and it always amazes me that people persistantly write to an email address you've told them months ago will no longer work. Is it that our friends and relatives refuse to believe that we have moved on to greener epastures? Or could it simply be that, like most of the American public, they don't actually read anything anymore? I think it's the latter.
You can think I'm being overly pessimistic, but I'm not. I've worked in a public library for two and a half years and I see it every day. My favorite are the people who hang out under the "No loittering" signs. (If they bothered to read them at all, they probably thought we meant no littering.) Or the people who are yelling on their cell phones in the middle of the library when there are signs all around telling people not to use cell phones. These are really examples of people doing whatever it is they want to. If you point out to people that they can't do that they always - without a doubt - say "Nobody told me," in some kind of gosh-I'm-just-a-dumb-jock kind of voice (you know the one I mean). When you point out the signs to them, they just shrug.
I'm not the only one who's noticed this. There have been studies done and people have quantified the decline of reading.
I'm not trying to scare the bookworms out there. I'm just trying to figure out why it is that when I write to my family members to tell them I've changed email addresses, why do they continue to write to the old address?
Case in point: Outside all doors to my building there is a fresh air vent for the building. Meaning the air I breathe in my office comes from next to the doors. Normally this is good, except when people seek refuge from the wind to smoke near one of the doors. There is of coarse a NO SMOKING - AIR INTAKE sign near each of the doors.
People like to see what they can get away with.
I don't know about the rest, but I can say why you don't have nearly the problem with SnailMail: the USPS will forward your mail for a year. If we had that for email, we'd be set!
Oh, and congrats on the new job!