I received an e-mail from my hosting company the other day, telling me that I had exceeded my 200mb space limit. To my surprise, 107mb of those 200mb were taken up by my mailbox.
Butbutbut, I didn’t know I had a mailbox for this domain! I never asked for one! Nobody ever told me I had one!
After much ferreting around, I finally managed to open my mailbox via webmail. Jeepers! There were over 7,700 unread e-mails waiting for me, all addressed to something-or-other at troubled-diva.com!
What’s more, on the very first page of results, there was an incredibly kind and thoughtful e-mail from a reader of this site from over two years ago, and – haha! – an invitation to Belle De Jour’s book launch party, would you believe. Who else had I snubbed? What else had I missed? How many BOOK DEALS and MAGAZINE COLUMNS had I unwittingly thumbed my nose at? What GILDED EXISTENCE had my ignorance cost me?
Obviously, I couldn’t delete any of these e-mails until I had read them. Every last one. Via a clunking webmail interface. With a strict limit of 25 e-mails per screen. Hey, that’s only 308 screens to wade through. Piece of piss.
Two hours and endless spams later – and not having unearthed one other e-mail of any interest whatsoever – I gave up and hit Delete All.
So, if you have ever e-mailed me at troubled-diva.com and wondered why you never received a reply – my sincere apologies.
I have now tweaked my settings such that all future e-mails to the domain will be automatically bounced – and I have moved my real e-mail address up to the top of the sidebar.
(That’s the one with the absolutely top-notch, super-duper, ultra-efficient webmail service – honestly, it’s brilliant, I haven’t touched Outlook in yonks – and the kick-ass spam filter to match. BT/Yahoo, I kiss you.)
Oh dear. They don’t teach you this sort of thing at Blog School, do they?
troubled diva 