M.E.A.D.

I've just discovered that I suffer from a bad case of M.E.A.D. Don't feel too ignorant if you've never heard of his serious disorder before reading those lines cause the disorder was only discovered and named by me less than three minutes ago.

Now that you are truly alarmed and worried about me (you'd better be), let me ease your suffering. The acronym stands for Multiple Email Addresses Disorder. If you're tempted to say: "Oh, is that it? I got that too. I have two emails, one for work and another one for personal correspondences", then don't.

Do you really think that if my case was that simple, that I would be wasting your (and my own more valuable) time on this post. On my first attempt, I counted five different addresses. A recount showed that I actually have a total of seven active email accounts!!

The first was my work address. Second came a Hotmail account. Then when Gmail was still in its trail phase, I created two addresses, one for family, and another one for friends. Then to post frank, liberal, and progressive comments on newspapers' sites and blogs without fear of being paid a visit by midnight security forces, I created another Gmail address in my husband's name (no habibi, just kidding). And to join the Yahoo Group of old school friends, I had to create a Yahoo account, and this lead to another dedicated Gmail address to receive the hundreds of emails sent by this good for nothing group cause the Yahoo account had limited features.

The saddest aspect of my disorder is that I have three of those accounts open all day long, two I check several times a day, and the last two, I check several times each week. In other words, I have no life away from my laptop.

To help find a cure for this serious disease, please send all your money to my brand new email address: mareeda.gedan@nasabeen.com. Thank you.