The Inbox?Lottery

This might be just me. But I randomly check my emails from time to time. I do this despite being an awful person with emails. I actually get all kinds of anxiety with emails.

Writing a simple email can take me anywhere from a few hours to a few days. Seeing replies to these emails makes me anxious and I have to archive them until I feel ready to sit down and read them. Yet, I still check my email.

What’s weird is my interval for checking increases when I haven’t sent much out. It’s probably because I know I’m safe from actually having to reply sometimes. What am I hoping for? I don’t like admitting this but I think I’m waiting for the lottery ticket.

I realize how crazy I sound. Yet there is a small part of me that hopes that I will get an email from some person I can’t even imagine offering me some opportunity I have no idea for a boatload of money.

The reason I think this is true is because… that’s how I felt when I bought my first lottery ticket a few weeks back. I write my dreams down in my journal and one day I dreamed I should buy a lottery ticket. So I did.

I bought the one where the numbers were going to be called out on the same day. The entire day, I was giddy with anticipation. Even if I knew the stats on how silly it was to think I would win, I still thought I would win. I can’t stress to you how sure I felt.

Of course, I didn’t win. But the emotions I felt on that one day were intense. I could understand why people would chase such a high. It’s one I would do well to avoid in the future. That emotion is something I feel when checking my email. That anticipation and certainty that something will come.

I tell you this because it’s nuts that I think this. It’s nuts that I have a small sliver of hope for this. I mean, it must be why I do the maniac thing of checking my email more than five times a day. But it’s only by comparing it to one silly behaviour that I can get some perspective on how silly I’ve been. Some people buy lottery tickets, I refresh my email.