Last month I had a long overdue clear out of my email inbox, unsubscribing from emails I don’t read and deleting page after page of marketing junk! This led to me thinking about which emails I did want to keep reading, and why.
I get countless marketing emails from online craft stores and reading them can feel like a nice indulgence. It’s only too easy at the moment to seek comfort in short-term pleasures like internet shopping – I can spend hours looking at stampers, dies and fabrics or watching YouTube videos showing new techniques and things to make if you buy the craft “box of the month.” As a result, my craft shelves are overflowing, my fabric cupboards are full to bursting and my knowledge of embossing, layering, stencilling and pattern-fitting is extensive. I have more ‘stuff’ than I know what to do with.
I realised these emails from friendly crafters I have never met had to go, as they really just want me to pay to join their quilting club or buy their new pattern. Likewise I clicked ‘unsubscribe’ to tempting newsletters from online craft stores and their YouTube channels. The thing is, the cards I buy don’t assemble themselves, even though everything I need is in the box. The trousers don’t make themselves just because I have pattern, fabric and a book showing me how. I actually need to spend time on the craft, which is so much better for my mental health than getting sucked into buying more and more things for my overflowing craft cupboards.
So back to my emails. One subscription that I chose to keep was with the London Wildlife Trust as the email newsletters are such a good read. Throughout lockdown, they sent a weekly update which somehow kept me thinking straight. They were full of photos of nature, encouraging personal stories and links to in depth articles and blogs. Now they come once a month and I still enjoy them – it was reading the latest one that got me pondering on how different it made me feel to the marketing emails.
The bookmark by my bed reminds me to “think on these things… whatever is good, honest, worth praising, true and just.” Reading the LWT newsletters enables me to do just that, in a way that indulging in craft retail therapy does not!
A question I will keep asking myself is, “Does reading this email actually do me good?” And if the answer is no, I will be much quicker to unsubscribe.
Post by Julia, our Location Support