Light Letter of Unsubscription
In honour of my decision to GET and STAY FOCUSED, I have been unsubscribing from the many distracting e-mail lists I’m on. Some are lists my conscience thinks I *should* be on, but have not made the time to read (I like to say “have not made” the time to read instead of “have not had” the time to read to recognize that how I spend my time is always my choice).
Yes, I still want to save the planet. Unsubscribing from the oil spill relief newsletter will not make me a bad person. In the past, I would see those emails in my inbox and then file them for later digestion. They’ve been piling up for months. But did I sleep better knowing they were available for immediate retrieval? No, I slept worse because they became part of the Pile-of-Unread-Unrearched-Information-Vital-to-Making-Me-a-Better-Person pile. (And let me tell you, that pile was only 1/2 the size of the Great-Unfinished-Projects pile.)
Getting rid of all that guilt and responsibility is freeing me to be more focused on what I love to do, which makes me a ray of sunshine to deal with, which can only make the planet a safer place for all (including the environment, because when I’m happy I ride my bike more).
Each time I went to unsubscribe to a newsletter, it always asked for a comment about why I wanted to unsubscribe. I used to write some generic b.s. if anything at all.
So, instead, today when I unsubscribed (hoping to bring a smile to the face of the minimum wage worker whose job it is to record, collate, and write a report about why people unsubscribe from their site) I did something like this:
Please take a moment to tell us why you chose to unsubscribe:
It’s not you, it’s me. It’s tearing me apart to leave you this way. I’m just focusing elsewhere right now and can’t be distracted by your seductive stories. Perhaps in a parallel universe, we can still be friends. Best of luck.
NOTE: If you are not good at letting go all at once, keep a list of all the enewsletters you unsubscribed from in case you ever want back on their lists.
