unsubscribe!

Unsubsribe!

It was a scene you’d expect from a millennial bar: two denizens at the corner with their noses intently in their phones oblivious to their surroundings.  But the Palm Pavillion at Clearwater Beach was clearly a boomer bar, complete with a young duo in the corner faithfully belting out hits of the 70s at least 2 decades older than they were.  It was their music that got Kathy and me to linger beyond our first few beers and gator bites.  We were in Clearwater Beach to visit my brother and escape Michigan’s cold.  We’d already had a wonderful early dinner at Badfin’s, settling in to the evening when I got an e-mail that my letter to Arthroscopy had been accepted.  Finding the teas in our room meager substitutes for libations of celebration, off we went the 4 blocks to Palm.  Great open atmosphere, even if the barriers to the beach weren’t open on this cold (for Florida) night.  At our choice seats at the bar we of course checked our phones for this and that.  I bitched about all the emails I had to wade through and Kathy explained about how her problem was so much worse, but that she was taking action.  It turns out for each email not of a personal source, somewhere in the e-mail – usually at the bottom in very small print – is the option to “unsubscribe”.  It can take some close scrutiny to find these releases of freedom, but they’re always there, maybe on top and even sometimes in the middle. They don’t always say unsubscribe, and a click often directs you to a second page to complete the transaction, sometimes with some check off justifications for your move. For CBS.com, I had to go to their FAQs to figure out how to unsubscribe from them. And resubscription is always just an easy click away. But we were cold, cruel, and thorough, and went at our mission with relish.  Hence the millennial imitation.  We realized that our job was not finished, and were at it the next morning. Eternal vigilance is the price of an uncluttered inbox.  You can have one, too.  Just have at it.