I am running dangerously low on virtual memory.
My computer’s not doing so well, either.
I am an inveterate pack rat. I still possess every letter ever written to me. Fifth-grade Valentines. Notes passed after school from the Marycrest High girls. Every daily sports section I worked on for 12 years.
I have kept every e-mail ever sent to me since becoming a theater critic. I do so in the hope of one day writing “Hate Mail: The Musical!”
I was managing to keep my junk to a manageable level until last year, when family deaths had left my bungalow bursting through the ivy. I’ve just never felt permission to toss the personal items of the dead. Why I just can’t seem to throw away Dad’s bar tabs from the Denver Press Club, I can’t say.
Now my garage is full. My cubbyhole is full. My shed is full. My storage space is full.
It got so bad that three loved ones broke into my house last year and conducted a junk intervention. I came home to an empty house and a full Dumpster – and those sainted three are surely still brushing off the dust.
But losing all that physical clutter was almost like a spiritual reawakening.
Now if only they could do something about my e-clutter.
The electronic age was supposed to make our lives more spartan and efficient than ever. Scan your family photos onto a hard drive and toss the originals. Convert your VCR tapes to DVDs. E-mail folders would replace boxes of letters.
Now I’m running out of storage in virtually every virtual way possible. My DVR is always hovering at 90 percent full. My cellphone is constantly telling me “no room for new text messages.” My home voicemail orders me to delete old messages before I can listen to new ones. My work voicemail can apparently store an unlimited number of messages – but I’m testing that theory. Everything – and everyone, they say – has its limits.
I have 5,000 e-mails in my “sent” box alone. I’ve created more than 250 subfolders in my “in” box. My home e-mail is at 94 percent. My Onfinite photo storage account, 97 percent. My iPod, full. My iTunes, dangerously close to full. My favorite photo of The Clash that once greeted me on my desktop is now covered in folders. I have hard drives filled with hundreds of hours of recorded interviews no one else is ever going to want to hear.
I’m completely weighed down by weightless storage.
Why can’t I just learn to spike? I suppose a shrink would suss this out in minutes – our photos and letters are our memories – proof that we existed. Those of us without kids leave nothing behind but … ourselves.
But are endless e-mails what we want to be the chronology of our lives?
I’m a morbid guy (I can’t help it; I’m a critic). So I am haunted by what an e-mess I may one day leave behind for … someone else to deal with.
I’m becoming incapacitated by issues of capacity.
And now I’ve reached my capacity for space on this topic.
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
