Unsubscribing

There was a time when I would send an e-mail note of interest or praise to somebody whose work I admired and more often than not a response would return.  That era of e-mails potential to create new connections has taken the trajectory of the telephone, where most calls are either between people you already know or somebody you don't know trying to sell you something.  We can now put ourselves on Do Not Call lists.  I suspect, but don't really know, that the decline in responses from accomplished individuals reflects the volume of e-mail that appears each time you turn it on.  The electronics do not prioritize so we have to do it ourselves, either by sender or by subject.  My own review starts with a click on delete options, usually unopened.  I'd still like to respond more than I do, but in order to do that I need to unsubscribe, the e-mail version of Do Not Call.

As I approach the New Year, at the first e-mail review, stuff from organizations that found me instead of me finding them get opened, scrolled to unsubscribe, and dispatched.  After about two weeks of this, done leniently for the most repetitive notifications, has started to make my in-box less cluttered.  I know longer receive notices of good deals for airport parking in another city that I drove to last year, Pinterest photos of food, newspapers or journals that wouldn't let me read as a non-subscriber, any political organization where I did not initiate contact, any organization to which I gave a one-time donation for a cause, or invitations to apply for jobs that would disrupt my retirement.  The number of instant deletes has started going way down.  I still have some uncertainty of what to do with notifications from organizations that I like:  my professional society, some Jewish advocates, my alma mater and others that make electronic pests of themselves by the frequency of notification.  I want less though not necessarily zero.  There's still the delete unread option.