Sensory overload & FOMO

I have decided that I receive WAY TOO MANY emails and, therefore, don't read them all right away. 90% of them are from websites that I have signed up at for either newsletters, sales, recipes, coupons, tips and whatever else I thought might be of use to me at the time.  Of those 90% I typically delete 50% of them immediately.  I don't even open them.  How stupid is that?  I asked for them, yet I don't want to look at them.  Then the 50% that's left, 40% of them I say "I'll look at later because the title looks intriguing", but typically I forget and they get pushed down.  To show you how bad this is in my Yahoo inbox I have 1127 unopened emails, with an additional 750 emails that I have opened and decided I needed to save for whatever reason.  That's a total of 1877 emails in my inbox.  Do you think I have a problem?  I do!

I AM A PACKRAT!  I admit.  I've been saving things for years.  I've got STUFF everywhere.  I try to let things go, but I go through anxiety because I just know I might need it someday!  It's a disease and it's called FOMO - Fear Of Missing Out.

I'm afraid I'm going to miss something really important from one of these websites, so I subscribe to them.  It's got to stop.  I've decided that the ones that I really like, if it's a blog, it will go on my blog roll on this page.  If it's a website for one of my quilt sites, I already know where to go and therefore don't need to be receiving all of their sale emails.  It just makes me want to buy when I really don't NEED to!  I have enough fabric to last me quite a long time!  It's sad!

As I believe apart of becoming healthy is taking control of my nutrition and to stop being the victim, I believe it's time I take control of my FOMO.  I believe this is disease that can be cured.  Like with my nutrition, I will take baby steps to take back control and reduce my sensory stimulation and start unsubscribing myself from 99% of all the websites that I've subscribed myself too.  I will also do a mass email dump!  I'm going to not even look at the emails from 2008 (yes that's how far back they go) and I'm just going to delete, delete, delete.  I have to!  Sometimes you just have to make a clean break.  Just say enough is enough.

So this week, I will focus on purging my email.  Next week I will work on purging the insane amount of magazines I have.  I have so many magazines from quilting, running, veganism, vegetarianism, etc, etc. that I can't read them all.  And when I do, I see a recipe or a pattern that I might like to make one day and then I save it so I can scan it.  Ya, the piles of magazines that need to be scanned is out of control and I'm tired.  I'm so overwhelmed by it that I don't do it.  So they pile higher and higher.  It's time.

Do you have something you need to purge from you life?  Do you have something in your life that is out of control?  We all have something, I may just have a lot more than you, but I'd still like to hear.  Share this process with me.  Are you ready to let go?  Are you still playing the victim?  Do you too suffer from FOMO?

Stay healthy