My Life is Passing Before My Eyes

Well, not really.
Just my email.
All of my correspondence, in fact, from the last two years is downloading AGAIN on my computer.
I don’t know why, but I currently have 18,000 unread emails.
Perhaps I scoffed at Mercury Retrograde one too many times, but this is the final touch today.
I woke to get an email which seemed like spam, telling me that the UPWARD DOG site had hit 90% of its bandwidth for the month.
I decided to forward it to my web guy anyway, just in case, even though I knew he was going away for a few days.
Well, it turns out that it was NOT spam and that my web guy –– who is in the Navy –– is away for these five days on a submarine or something.   (I would like to point out that these are the ONLY five days a year apparently where he’s away –– maybe he’s in the reserves or is at the end of his tour of duty.)  Anyway, a few frantic emails back and forth and he seems to have arranged to have a friend increase my bandwidth –– or at least I really hope so because I just got another warning that I was at 98%!
Of course this means that people are going to the UPWARD DOG SITE and downloading the free ebook and ordering “real books” but still … I had no idea I even had a quota of traffic I could not exceed.  Plus I don’t know what happens when I exceed the bandwidth.  Does the site go down….?  (Please God, not that).  Do I get charged a fee or a fine?  And apparently, it’s like my phone minutes in that I get a zero balance again on Thursday, the 1st.  It’s VERY confusing, but given the whole submarine situation, I just have to LET GO.  (sigh).
Although I may appear very carefree and devil-may-care about lots of things, I take data VERY seriously.
For example, I have two external back-up drives + carbonite + I believe in back-up DVDs of vital data stored in the refrigerator (in case of fire) and in a location at least 500 miles away (in case of natural disaster).  [I’m not joking.]
Anyway, now as I write this blog while thousands upon thousands of emails are rapidly downloaded, it’s sort of trippy to see the natural progression of things.  There goes the email for the first time the Vancouver project was introduced.  Then there’s the Florida project, too.   All those emails with the landlady regarding the move.  The early exchanges between my Amazing Producer and myself before she even knew about the novel, much less optioned it.  Friendships growing from post-January Australian cruise exchanges into multiple daily emails between me and Susan and Dan and Andrea and all my other new friends, and then moving to San Francisco.  All them unfolding in chronological order, just as they did originally, except now over 30 minutes and not 700 days.
And yet, despite the poignant, immanent threat of running out of bandwidth, I suppose it’s not quite the same thing as a near death experience where your life is said to flash before your eyes.
But in a way, given how much we live these days through email, it kinda sorta is.