Loyalty

I’m loyal.

To brands. And it’s not at all weird.

The best example is the truest example. Like so many others, I’ve subscribed to Brain Pickings. I get my weekly emails on Sundays. But— Sunday is when I take the day off from everything. From people, from work, from going out, from dressing up, from even being civil. Except eating. Sunday, I devour.

Sunday is the one day I sleep all day. I don’t care what happens in the world, or outside my room, I will neither wake up nor care.

So when I get my weekly email on Sunday, I don’t often feel like reading it. Sundays are the days I’m too bored and lazy to lift even a limb, let alone prop up my laptop and read.

So I just convince myself I’d read it on Monday. And I now have 22 unread emails from Brain Pickings. That’s 22 weeks of procrastination. That’s almost half a year.

I’m a little dull when it comes to numbers, but even I know that was a long time. But the thing is, I don’t know what to do about it. Brain Pickings newsletters are interesting and long. And if I just manage to get started, I know I wouldn’t be able to stop. It’s the starting that’s problematic.

Sometimes, I look at all the subjects of the emails in bold and feel so helpless. As if there’s nothing I can do to read them without reading them.

And it doesn’t help that I don’t like having unread emails in my inbox. I like my inbox clean. It’s something to do with closure, I hear.

Of course there’s one thing: I can just unsubscribe. But I won’t. It’s the one thing I will not do. I’ve unsubscribed from loads of other online magazines and blogs that became too strenuous to follow — but I won’t unsubscribe from Brain Pickings.

Because I’m loyal.

Yes, it freaks me out too. I’m so in love with what they do that I want to know everything they publish. But it’s also overwhelming, I accept. And though I accept it, I will never unsubscribe. Because I’m loyal that way.

Every time I think of unsubscribing, I feel a hot rush of guilt running through me. As if it’s a wrong thing to do. Wrong as in, morally wrong. I feel so guilty even thinking about unsubscribing from the magazine. Because I love their work.

But guilt changes nothing. I still have 22 unread emails from Brain Pickings. Talk about obsession, huh?