Dear Inbox,

Remember the days when I used to actually respond to email messages? Remember when I compared emails to pounds and helped you lose weight? I was proud of myself then, but things have changed.

As I type, you have 349 messages, with more certain to come. Now, I'm not of the type who leaves all messages ever in the inbox. No, I leave them there because there's something I need to do about them. Like respond. Or put something on my calendar.

I think maybe your state is indicative of a deeper problem.

Lately, I've felt myself ... I'll say getting lazy, although I don't think that's quite it. I'm tired, my dear inbox, tired especially of being on top of things. I've been on top of things all my life, keeping organized homework lists as early as elementary school and writing down all of my extracurricular activities on a calendar so I knew where I had to be when. I remembered things and did everything right and never let the ball drop. I was reliable. It's how I succeeded and looked good and got accepted to every school I applied to.

But now I'm tired of it. I'm tired of fitting myself into others' schedules: public buses, work hours, work projects, and so on. I'm tired of structuring everything so perfectly that even my unstructured time is structured. I'm tired of fitting my life into boxes and slots of calendar pages, email responses, timetables, résumés, and spreadsheets.

I'll get over it. I'll get back on top of things someday. But I have a feeling that as long as you're around, my inbox, I'll always have the pressure of responsibility, of tasks left undone, of falling short of expectations and letting people down.

Maybe it's that I'm playing the part of the career woman I was never meant to be, and the confusion between should and is has muddled other areas of my life as well. But whatever it is, dear inbox, if I abandon you for good someday, know it's not your fault, nor the fault of the people whose kind, loving, and often encouraging words fill you up. It's just that, by then, maybe I'll have grown up enough to accept that it's finally time to run away.

Hugs & kisses,
B

Dear Apple,

The reason I got an iPhone in December was for the public transit map information on your Maps app. And now, nine months later, you obliterate it with your own terrible excuse for a Maps app that doesn't even pretend to tell me the bus schedule? Really?

I'm not even kidding: where can I downgrade to the previous iOS so I can actually use the feature I got this phone for in the first place? I have it on good authority that Steve Jobs is ashamed of this whole affair, keeping tabs with his Ways My Company Is Failing Me app from the Great Beyond.

And this is just my personal public transit outcry; I understand that folks who use Maps for driving and other purposes are perhaps less stranded than those of us suddenly left without transit directions, but they're no less outraged at the faulty and downright dumb functionality of this new excuse for a "smart" application.

Okay, okay, barring a downgrade to the previous iOS, where can I get an Android? Yes, Apple. I just went there.

Shame on you,
B

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9:35 update: Upon initial investigation, I'm ready to tentatively say HopStop is a valid replacement, as least for the bus schedules, but I'm not sure what will replace the driving problems. Just one more good reason not to invest in a car.

Dear Cat,

I spoke too soon. Way to pee on the most expensive thing in my closet: the pair of satiny dress shoes I just got two days ago for my maid of honor trappings.

Boo & hisses,
B

Dear Logic,

I appreciate your efforts, I really do. But sometimes, no matter how much you present the reasonable side of things, it just won't make my emotions budge. I'll stay angry, depressed, bored, or ecstatic whether it's at all logical or not. The past week has been logically awesome, but my emotions can't seem to keep up. Don't stop trying to reason me back over to normal, but please don't expect me to always make sense. Sometimes I just only have it in me to be a Marianne Dashwood, rather than her sensible sister Elinor.

Hugs & kisses,
B

Dear Bank,

I'm sure that from your perspective it makes comPLETE sense to have no easily findable "report a lost or stolen debit card" option on your website or monthly account statements, but for my part, I can't think of a good reason.

Seriously. Card. Missing. How do I tell you?

I suppose I could send an email, but that feels a little too much like this episode from IT Crowd.

Maybe someday you'll make your emergency number easy to locate. Until then, don't allow any debit charges from my account. Please? Somehow?

Hugs & kisses,
B

Dear Creative Writing,

Sometimes you're so aggravatingly impossible that I wonder why I even bother trying.

Hugs & kisses,
B

Dear Pancakes,

Thank you for being a tasty way to use up some old milk and butter last night after the Ash Wednesday service.

Of course, I'm not sure how thankful I should be that you nearly became ashes, yourselves. Why did you have to nearly burn? Why did you have to fill the entire apartment with smoke so that the alarms went off and brought my landlord upstairs to make sure his house wasn't burning down around him?

I get it. You're in cahoots with God. Shame on me for being ashamed of the ashes on my forehead from the Ash Wednesday service and being glad I hadn't seen anyone on the way into my apartment. Setting off the smoke alarms was just your little way of teaching me humility, wasn't it, Pancakes?

Well, it worked. And you were delicious, which more than made up for trouble.

Hug & kisses,
B

Dear Metaphorical Blanket That Has "Don't Get Out of Bed This Morning" Stitched All Round Its Edges,

When my alarm goes off and you immediately descend on me, tucking yourself in around my toes and covering my head with the dark, heavy feeling of foreboding toward the day, why don't I ever listen to you? I have plenty of mornings when I just don't want to get out of bed, but you don't show up on those mornings. The mornings when you wrap me up in fear of the forthcoming day should make me sit up and take notice. "Hey, this morning's going to suck. Maybe I should just let it pass by without me."

But then I ignore you and I log in to work and my computer crashes and my health insurance company calls me and doesn't know where my policy is in its transfer across state lines.

You know something, though? That was just the morning. You just say, "Don't get out of bed this morning." That doesn't refer to the whole day.

Clean laundry, fun students, hilarious creative narrative assignments, a walk in the sunny and dormant botanical garden near my laundromat, and a surprise gift of chocolate-covered pretzels made the afternoon worth living for. So, you smothering old blanket, maybe I should listen to you more often, but then again, maybe I should focus on the distinction of "morning." Some morning's gonna hate. But that doesn't necessarily apply to the whole long day.

Still, I like the clear warning. Please don't stop alerting me when I'm about to enter a foregone forenoon.

Hugs & kisses,
B

Dear 17-Year-Old Writing Students,

Much as I try, I cannot figure out how you have sat in my class the past six weeks and still do not know what a thesis statement is, where it belongs in an essay, and why it is important. I'm also unsure how you have seen the exact same edits on the exact same errors for the past 3-4 weeks and still haven't corrected them. I might start feeling like a failure of an English teacher if it weren't for your twelve-year-old classmates who are writing college-level reports. I would say that, someday, you'll wish you had paid more attention. Unfortunately, if you've made it this far without caring, I doubt you'll start anytime soon.

Hugs & kisses,
B