What Your Email Address Says About You

Mine, evidently, says that I'm old. 

I remember way back when, not quite at the dawn of the Internet but close enough, spending a good amount of time crafting what I thought was the perfect email address. This email couldn't just be my name, because that is boring. And I'm a writer. And it couldn't involve numbers, because I at least had the foresight to know that cementing my age or graduation year in my email address was something I would one day regret. No -- my email address needed to be clever, and so it was.

I envisioned prospective employers seeing this email and thinking, "Wow, this girl is so talented. I must hire her now." But these days, this email I spent all that time crafting invites cackles instead of compliments on my creativity. Apparently my email address is showing my age.

I don't use Hotmail, or even AOL (and I won't lie, I kinda judge people who do). I use Yahoo!, and apparently that is "old" enough for some people, usually those in the Y generation, to snicker. "You don't use Gmail?" they say, somewhat condescendingly. "I have a Gmail," I reply, always defensively, "but it's mostly filled with spam because I never check it."

You see, I explain to these Gmail groupies, I created the email when Gmail was first on the market -- you know, back in the day when you needed an invite to even create an account -- and I didn't click with it. I like to keep a very clean and organized inbox, and Gmail's then-lack of folders and all this business about "archiving" didn't appeal to me. I liked Yahoo's folder system, so I stuck with it. And that was fine by me. Until now.

Now that I'm back on the job market, the last thing I want is to be judged by my email address. And so I've forsaken my Yahoo!, which has so far treated me well, for Gmail. Things are going okay. I've learned to enjoy "Send and Archive" (helps me keep a clean inbox), though I do still miss my folder system (sorry, labels just aren't the same).

I haven't completely abandoned my Yahoo, though. I'm holding on to it in the hopes that one day it will be considered vintage and in vogue, and all those who once snickered at me will think, "Wow, if only all the Yahoo! email addresses weren't used up, I could be cool like that girl I remember with the really creative email address who clearly spent a long time crafting it."

Photo: StepbyStep.com

I wonder: Do you judge -- or have you felt judged -- by your email address?