Inbox Flood

Inbox 14K Total

Inbox
13K Unread

Early last week my Gmail inbox reached 24.4K total and 22.2K unread. It had been 2 weeks since loosing Merlin and I was tentatively reengaging a few of the many things I'd pushed to the back burner and turned the heat off the day Merlin got sick.  That day I discovered several items requiring attention like sympathy notes, blog comments, notes from my sisters, a thank-you/keep it up note from a Joystory reader, requests to review, notifications from Net Galley, and notification the as yet to be used domain name for my intended online business page was expiring this weekend.

Realizing there were likely to be many more such prompted me to start slogging through the flood of 150-300 per day not counting the ones I've filtered to skip the in-box. Well that and the realization that I have to fix this inbox issue before I go live with any of my online business goals--self pub, copywriting, gift store and more.

The flood was created by following the suggestion of the AWAI copywriting course to collect junk mail to study by purposefully subscribing to email lists in niches that interested me.  Turned out I was drawn to a lot of niches--health and fitness, (diet and nutrition, naturopathic medicine, exercise) self-transformation, Spiritual paths, Law of Abundance, and hypnosis, meditation, and Brain Wave Entrainment mp3, self-pub, marketing, web site creation, promo and maintenance....

AWAI itself sends me 6-10 per day.

I began the AWAI copywriting course to learn how to self-promote but decided I might as well consider soliciting clients as a way to support my true passion of story and poetry.

I should have been creating filters and labels from the get go so the copywriting samples were either skipping the inbox or easily archived.  Same for the task list to keep the personal, urgent, time sensitive, blog and social media, business or commitment related separate from the many 'interesting, worth a more leisurely look sometime.'

I've been slogging away at it daily for nearly two weeks now and still haven't cut it in half from its crest.  Discouraging. Tho I should keep in mind the 150-300 per day are still rushing is as I slog.

Eventually I'll need to unsubscribe from many lists but I'm not taking the time to evaluate them individually for usefulness.  So, except for a few that have pissed me off, I've just been creating filters and labels then going down the label list and archiving everything sometimes attaching an email I need to tend to or just want to look at closer to a task.

But that is flooding my task list which I've never broke up into themed lists so that needs to be done next. Tho I'm considering whether I should set aside the inbox until I've created at least a few that separate the urgent and the action/reply required from the 'check-this-out-when-you-get-a-minute'.

Of course I didn't remain in the analytic mindset while reading these copywriting samples.  I got caught up in the freebie trap, subscribing to new lists to get the free, PDFs, video, mp3, tutorials, email lesson series, webinars, replays of teleseminars...

And I've bought a few products, most of which are more of the same.

Where has the time been coming from to read, watch, listen to all of these?

Or, more precisely, what have I given up doing while I do that?

My counselor says that I busy myself with inconsequential things as a distraction from things I'm avoiding thinking about.

Read more...

Fall 2013 Challenges

more LOLs to see  share  caption  vote

Reading

Dewey's 24hr Read-a-Thon October 12
It's a good thing I had the concept for this post now as I hadn't yet checked to see if they'd scheduled the October Read-a-Thon.  Usually it is one of the last two Saturday's of October so this was unexpectedly early and I might have missed it!

This will be my 13th.  But like the one last April I won't be doing the full 24 hours.  My med schedule and sleep schedule have to take priority.  So I will start with the rest at 5am but won't be able to push it much past midnight.  In April I made it to 2am but that was before I switched from night owl to early bird last summer.

Virtual Author Blog Tour reviews 

• Tinseltown Riff by Shelly Frome -- October 10th
• The Return by Melissa Douthit -- October 21
• The Thunderbird Conspiracy by R. K. Price -- October 30
• Ghosts of Lost Eagle -- November 4
• Sinnerman by Jonathan M. Cook -- November 7
• The Three Sisters by Bryan Taylore -- November 12
• Blood Drama by Christopher Meeks -- November 15
• Head Games by Erika Rummel -- November 19
• Journey to Galumphagos By Seth Eisner -- November 21
• With Friends Like These by L. Hunter Cassells -- November 25
• Woman on Top by Deborah Schwartz -- November 27

Also for Virtual Author Book Tours I'll be posting my review as a Beta tester of a new website/community for Inde Authors some time in mid October.

Writing

A Round of Words in 80 Days
Round 2 2013
The writing challenge that
 knows you have a life

Round 4 of ROW80 begins tomorrow with the first check-in on Wednesday.  I was hoping to have my Goals updated before posting this but did not get to it.  But other than the specifics of the writing projects I'll be focusing on it will look much the same as my goals are mostly of the time investment commitments

NaNoWriMo
Still haven't updated my profile for this year.  Probably because I haven't chosen the novel to work on either.

AWAI Copywriting course work including the 10K challenge to complete a project for AWAI that can potentially earn me up to $10,000 if I am able to apply what I learn to their satisfaction.

Personal Challenges

Finish the Secret Santa crochet project from last year!  so close but so far.  I Finished the two panels of squares that make up the top, bottom and side pockets of this crafter's tote.  But I still have two inches of 2 chain mesh to add to the 8ft Mobius strip that will make the bottom, sides and carry strap.

Also still need to tuck tails on the panels and once the Mobius strip is off the hook attach it to the panels and the panels to each other.

Start the  Secret Santa project for this year (twill be much smaller project!)  Will make up for that by adding something bought and/or a gift card

Continue Daily posting

Dentist, Doctor and Counselor appointments:  There will continue to be several per month

Now that my mood has been stabilized and the infection in my teeth being dealt with it is time to:

• Return to daily exercise
• Take on some more responsibility here at Mom's to take some of the burden off my sister
• Continue the sorting and packing of my belongings in anticipation of return to Rogue Valley before Christmas (Hope won't die)

Create Professional Website for Copywriting Business
Create Professional Website for Self Publishing Business
The website work amounts to dabbling in the sandbox versions my husband is setting up for me at first but I will need to get serious after Thanksgiving as I hope to go live the first week of January.

Read more...

Copy That

moar kitteh   see   share   caption

Today I spent nearly the entire morning session working with the AWAI copywriting course materials.  After spending several days getting oriented last week, I had to take a break Sunday thru Wednesday for the major reorganizing of the room and creation of a viable workstation and then two doctor appointments.  So today was my first day back with the AWAI materials since Saturday.

I still didn't get as far as I'd hoped.  Still in the orienting process.  Also trying to catch up on the AWAI emails.  Welcomes and tips and of course more AWAI products.  But even the product emails are grist for the mill as they are samples of what I'm about to learn how to do.

Speaking of emails.  I'd been working my inbox down from 13K over the last month and had it worked down to 2440 late last week.  Had to put that on hiatus since Friday as well and it is already back up to 2600.  Did not touch it today.  It increased by over 50.  Will have to get a handle on that soon.

What the cat advises in the LOL above is not completely silly BTW.  Just not quite as he advises tho.  In the reading I've done of AWAI materials so far I've found several references to 'swipe files' and 'seed libraries' which I gather through context are one and the same and are collections of ad copy that works and we are encouraged to create our own such files and collect examples of ad copy in the niches we are interested in by getting on mailing lists.

So apparently the hoarding instinct in me that can't trash email will pay dividends as a good 60% of my email archives are newsletters, direct mail offers, political action requests, non-profit solicitations...  And of course all in niches that interest me since why else did I get on the mailing lists?

Read more...