Living Light: Online Accounts

Photo by Kym Ellis on Unsplash

I think your life is 'light' if you are on the right track with it. Similar to how I feel about meditation in this post. Everything else -- letting go, trimming, living with less etc -- is secondary. But let's focus on the secondary.

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I have several e-mails. Two with my real name are for work, people I know and Google Play. And a few others are for social media accounts etc. One of the social media ones receives a lot of spam in recent years, and I'm increasingly bothered by this. So I'm starting to think about where else have I left this e-mail that attracted so much spam. How many online accounts do I have?

I was shocked to learn that some people have 50 online accounts. Who are these people? And that was before I found out that some others have hundreds! I can't possibly have that many, right? It still feels a lot by my standard, but I can't possibly have more than 10.

So I traced my steps. E-mails; online banking; social media accounts; tax matters; work-related spreadsheets, databases and websites; and Wi-Fis -- I have 37 login names and passwords (that I know of)!

I decided I cannot have more login names and passwords than friends.

So over the weekend, I managed to delete 15, most of them I don't use or haven't been using for a long time anyway. This does not include subscriptions to God-knows-what newsletters that I don't even read or didn't even realize I subscribed to -- all unsubscribed now.

And out of the 22 left, I only use 15: two e-mails, two Wi-Fis, eight work / tax / banking-related, one Twitter, one account to play Sims FreePlay and SimCity BuildIt, and one blog. I still haven't deleted, though emptied, the remaining seven, in case I need them. Ok, I probably never will, but I'm not deleting them yet.

So what's the big deal, right? I go from 37 to 22. It's not like I ditch the internet and technology and go diving this week. First of all, how can "ditching technology" even cross your mind? Even if I decide to spend my year meditating on a mountain, I still need to watch Game of Thrones and read my Twitter feed. But deleting these useless online accounts does make me feel good a little, like I've quit cut back on a bad habit.

Twenty-two is still more than the number of friends that I have, though.