The first line in the instructions! The first! And it stopped me cold. It seemed a simple Weekly Writing Challenge: learning to use the “Post by Email” tool to create a post. Okay. I like new challenges.

So I clicked on the link and I read, “”Before you can publish by email, you must generate a special email address. This address is unique to you and must be kept secret (anyone that knows the email address can publish a post to your blog).”

I already have five email addresses: one for home, one professional, two schools, and a yahoo address that I’ve had forever. Five. And one more to keep track of? No. Not today. I don’t need email posting that bad. I suppose I could have used the old Yahoo address, but it mostly collects spam now – not the perfect answer.

Perhaps if this challenge had come, say, three weeks ago, I might have been up to the, well, challenge. However, I’ve just come home from a ten-day vacation and it’s taken me two days to catch up with email and clean out my inbox….over five hundred email. That’s not counting the two school accounts which I haven’t approached or Yahoo. That’s just my two private email. And as I began deleting, here’s what I was thinking: my sister’s retreat center in North Kohala.

  My room behind the french doors opening onto a balcony on the left – the blue room, much the same color as the walls in my office here at home.

Here’s the other thing I was thinking: an evening trip to the beach where sea turtles clamber up to sleep the night, one sticking its head into the bushes as a curtain, I supposed, just beyond where the women are standing. It’s a keeper shot.

So as I sorted and deleted and deleted and highlighted and marked the I’ll get back to that soon, mostly I remembered Hawaii. Mostly I just deleted. I get way too many newsletters and extras of every sort and style, including the daily electronic New York Times and USA Today.

And I receive several blogs in my inbox.

The first I stopped to read was the one titled, “Killers Don’t Wear Flip-flops.” Now. That was a definite stop here and think about that!!! sort of moment. And the blog lived up to its promise. I’ve linked it just so you can read it.

Teresa has the gift of offering humor, something sorely lacking in the New York Times news, quite frankly.

The other blog I read, “22 things I learned on birthday vacation” made me wonder what I’d learned on my vacation without a birthday….that list, well, I don’t have one. Not yet. But it seemed a good idea.

But I have written the DPChallenge, anyway, about in-boxes and email, just in an off-the-track sort of way which has more to do with NOT doing it than doing it, but it’s written. And I’ve posted a couple of the Hawaii photos. A good excuse for showing them, all in all…..

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