Kensington — A Prince Edward Island man whose New Year’s resolution was to at last clear his queue of emails now says he’s not sure how to continue bettering himself in 2017.
“I finally said ‘enough is enough’ and deleted every unread or partially read message in my Gmail inbox,” said IT manager Matt Hendrick. “I started out trying to respond to them one by one earlier this week, but figured if they had been really pressing, I would have answered the emails the moment I received them, knowing me.”
Our reporter asked Hendrick if he has any other resolutions he can chip away at.
“Well no — I honestly thought the whole email thing would take longer… I guess because I planned to actually answer each one individually. But when I sat down at the computer I got to thinking: I’m a busy guy, and I’m pretty important around here, so why shouldn’t I just delete the whole damn thing? The new year is all about a clean slate.”
Hendrick’s friends, family and co-workers have mixed reactions about his resolution.
“I emailed him with a simple question back in April,” said colleague Mark Jennings. “It’s very interesting to me that he has no time to give me a straight yes or no, but has all the time in the world to type a 20,000-word Facebook status about his so-called resolution.”
“I’m so proud of Mark for making a resolution and keeping it,” said Hendrick’s wife, Gina, as she was commenting on her husband’s Facebook status, which has already received 251 likes. “There were quite a few unanswered emails from me, just asking what time he’d be home for dinner and that kind of thing; it was brave of him to just clear them out without worrying what I, or what other people, might think. Not everyone has the guts to pull that off.”
Hendrick said he’s already starting to plan his resolutions for 2018. “I think that’ll be the year I endorse some of the people who’ve endorsed me on LinkedIn,” he mused. “Or maybe I’ll finally accept some of my hundreds of pending Facebook friend requests. Luckily I have the whole year to decide.”