Thanks for messaging me. I will endeavor to respond to you in a timely manner but, due to the sheer volume of emails arriving in my inbox with each passing moment, I will fail. Sweet Jesus, there’s another dozen. Cheers.
Thank you for contacting me. And kudos in advance for your heroic patience in awaiting my response; it is a sign of your strength of character that you aren’t going to hassle me with a bunch of re-forwarding, touching base or stopping by in person to ask if I got your email. You’re a rock star.
Your message is important to me. Please be assured that as you await my response, I will not be reclining in a hammock or hitting puree on a blender full of Margarita mix, but hunched at my desk, scrolling through the horrors as they unfold in my newsfeed. While that information is likely no help regarding the content of your email, I hope you can find some solace knowing neither of us is happy.
Sincerest gratitude for your message and your willingness to be open and vulnerable when you have no idea when I’ll respond, if at all. Let’s sit with that a moment, dwell in the uncertainty, drifting in the beauty of action without expectation of reaction. Let your request/comment/concern/urgent issue rise up, up through the top of your head and skyward until it dissipates like a fine mist. Namaste.
Your email found me. Isn’t that enough?
Thank you for your email. I am currently deep in the woods, communing with the shadows and will respond to you as soon as the skies are auspicious and the sun-bleached bird bones I rattle and cast yield your IP address. (*indecipherable whispering among the trees*)
Just a quick message to let you know I received your email and it is at the top of a list, the bottom of which I may never see in my lifetime. Just like I’ll probably never see Paris, learn to play the cello or fulfill any of the dreams my younger self clung to, even as she stepped into the grinding maw of capitalism to be crushed like a saltine day after day after day. C’est la vie!
Before I respond to your email, did you get mine? Check your spam. Maybe you deleted it by accident? I definitely remember sending it. Could you look for it and get back to me? No rush, I’m happy to wait.
Yeah, I got your email. But instead of responding, I want to empower you to resolve this on your own — yes! Do you want to be someone who asks questions, or someone who questions asking? Do you really want me to complete a task, or will this task complete you? Some of us — and I mean you here — are born to make things happen, to wrestle challenges into submission with our own hands. I see that fire in you and am not going to smother it with my involvement. No, I’m going to give it space to grow into a conflagration of productivity that is going to blow everyone away and they’ll look and say, “Hot damn. They really did it.” No way am I taking that away from you, champ. You’ve got this.
I have received your email and ask for your patience as I strive for balance by ignoring my inbox to blend up some Margaritas, settle into a hammock in my neighbor’s yard while they are at work and who knows, maybe I’ll browse flights to Paris while France is still accepting American visitors. Apologies for any typos; I’m pretty drunk.
Thank you for reaching out. Can we be real for a second? Look at us. Look at our inboxes, teeming with people we’ll inevitably disappoint, vague questions that will take a volley of additional messages to parse, disasters we’re too late to fix. Even now, it’s growing, new messages landing atop the old, all of it ossifying into an impenetrable, sedimentary cliff we can never climb. I don’t know if we’ll ever escape it all, if we’ll ever really be free. But what if we two simply released each other from the trap of sender and recipient, the burden of obligation? What if we could shake loose this one bond? After that, who knows? Here, I’ll let go first. Fly away, little bird, fly.
Jennifer Fumiko Cahill (she/her) is the arts and features editor at the Journal. Reach her at (707) 442-1400, or jennifer@northcoastjournal.com. Follow her on Bluesky @jfumikocahill.bsky.social.
This article appears in Summer of Fun 2025.
