How many email addresses

have you got?

Most of us have only one address for mail, that of the dwelling in which we live. Some of us have a work address which is also used for personal mail. Here in Downunder and in the UK there are also personal as well as business post office boxes available. I imagine they are also available elsewhere. But most people use only one of these ways to get their personal mail.

Email seems to be different. I was asked yesterday how many email addresses did I have. My reply was, "Only one."

Then I thought about it. Yes, there is my personal email address - the address I use for communicating with family, with friends, for messages about medical appointments, queries of a personal nature and so on. I had to "move house" on it some years ago and it was just about as bad as getting physical mail redirected. Much of that had to do with the fact that other people did not change their address books when I sent the information on.

There is the email I use for work purposes. It's a group email in the sense that we all know the password and we can all read what is written there. I suppose it is a bit like all living in the same house and sharing the mail. Outsiders would be rather bewildered by the fact that we don't always speak the same language there and that we use a lot of symbols mixed in with the words and even just the symbols. It doesn't matter we understand each other - most of the time!

And a little while back my nephew showed me how to set up another account, one for a special project. I had told him I didn't want to use my personal email address because it would mean people I knew nothing about would know where I "live".  It took him less than two minutes to do this. Not being particularly technically minded I had no idea such a thing could be so easily done but it was a sensible move.

I look on all this a bit as if it was a filing cabinet. There is the drawer which says "me". There is another drawer which says "work". The third drawer says, "knitting project".  If something appears in "me" I can transfer it to one of the other drawers. The idea would not work unless I could do that. 

When I get to the end of the knitting project as it now stands I might rename that file and use it for another knitting project. I could keep the old folders at the back (this year and last) and work on the new folders at the front (the rest of this year and the next).

It seems to work. I just need to make sure I look in all the mail boxes and keep them tidy enough to find things. It can't be that hard can it?