Most changes are forced upon us as the world evolves, and there is little anyone can do about it.
Though I want to be the exception to the rule, I grudgingly acknowledge I am not. I resist as much as I can and hold on to small victories, but I am constantly reminded that much of it is outside my control.
Such as GCI’s decision to get out of the email business next year. Like many Alaskans, I have had a GCI email account since the 1990s — long before smartwatches and smartphones took away our ability to remember phone numbers and convinced people that Googling was the answer to most everything.
Long before bathroom-dropped smartphones gave new meaning to the expression “flushing your life away.”
My email account is not as old as my road atlas (1980s), my dishes (1976) or my wide-wale burgundy corduroy suit and paisley vest (1968) with bellbottoms so big that you could fit a moose hindquarter into one leg and a fat king salmon into the other.
However, just like my dishes, atlas and college graduation suit (still fits), I thought email addresses were supposed to last forever. Same as Polaroid, IBM and Compaq computers, Toys “R” Us, Blockbuster and Sears. I guess those failures should have been my first clues that nothing lasts forever.
The next clue I missed was that some of my old dental crowns are falling out. The dentist said that happens as we get old. Another reason not to like change.
I don’t blame GCI for imposing change on 40,000 Alaskans. Fewer people are using the company’s email service, especially when Gmail and other providers are so prevalent and easy — and free. Why sell a product that produces little in return for the business but user calls to the service line?
It was inevitable, just as Blockbuster gave up on renting videotape movies as the world changed to Netflix CDs and, later, to streaming. Instead of walking or driving to a store to select a movie, anyone can pick a flick and click the remote all one-handed, without ever having to put down their smartphone. Or maybe you can tell your smartphone to stream to your TV. I wouldn’t know, I still think of streamers as party decorations hung from the ceiling.
So, although I am grousing and grumbling, I am starting to think about migrating to a new personal email address. Of course, I still think of migrating as something I did when I moved from Chicago to Alaska in 1976, but I guess words can change too.
But what to choose for an email address? Something that alerts people to my personality. Something witty, like a personalized license plate. Something unique, which will not be easy — Gmail has an estimated 1.8 billion email accounts worldwide.
I have time to think about it. GCI won’t bail out of the email business until next year. Of course, I’ve already had a couple of friends warn me to start the change soon, so that I can reach out to everyone who has used my old email address for the past 30 years.
But I think I’d rather wait. Not for any good reason, other than to prove to myself I am stubborn. Some things don’t change.
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