"Do I Dare to Eat a Peach?"

Shiny new MacBook Neo highlighted that there were over 25,000 emails in my account.  Many unread.  Most not worth saving.  At least one sender had died.  J. Alfred Prufrock may have ‘measured out [his] life with coffee spoons’, but I have the measure of retired life deleting emails; redundancy, signing-on, year of college, allotment, pension, the coffee spoon path into retirement was right there.

iCloud storage has been full for ages, so started a 15-minute experiment of deleting ancient emails, two years-worth at a time.  It’s a curious and bittersweet exercise.  Times I’d forgotten about, good and bad; the pre-covid cinema club, HND homework and how covid interrupted the whole first term.  Graduating top of the class – what a swot, although given some of the classmates, it’s not so impressive.  Some horrible women.  Have since learned about female bullying* - saw how I chose to own my college experience despite it.  Revelled living in Glasgow; Eventbrite bookings, art galleries, exhibitions, printing courses, theatre.  Understood why I haven’t touched a piece of stained glass since.  Bought beautiful glass, but didn’t do anything.  Designs come to me, get written down, but I don’t do anything.  Except shop apparently.  An inordinate amount of Amazon, Emma Bridgewater, Monsoon and various other online shopping salves.  Felt a bit sad about those.  There are worse ways to spend your money I suppose.  At least I have all this gorgeous clutter to show for it.  Realised, am not stuck; peaceful, true autonomy just takes time to settle into.  It’s an awakening process.  Nobody draining your energy is a gem of retirement.  The day being your own is another.  No meetings, permissions for holidays, no performance reviews.  Total freedom.  To let the past go.

Down to 7,500 emails.  Still don’t have iCloud space due to gigabytes of photos.    

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/44212/the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock

*Timestamp 15:00 ChatGPT helped, who knew! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71V0JWBgwm8