Changes are forced upon us as the world evolves, and there is little anyone can do about it.
Though I want to be a rigid exception to the rule, I grudgingly acknowledge I am mostly helpless. I resist change as much as I can and hold on to small victories, but I am constantly reminded that much of it is outside my control.
Such as GCI’s decision to get out of the email business next year.
Like many Alaskans, I have had a GCI email account since the 1990s — long before smartwatches and smartphones took away our ability to remember phone numbers and convinced people that Googling was the answer to most everything.
Long before bathroom-dropped smartphones gave new meaning to the expression “flushing your life away.”
My email account is not as old as my road atlas (1980s), my dishes (1976) or my wide-wale burgundy corduroy suit and paisley vest (1968) with bell bottoms so big that you could fit a moose hindquarter into one leg and a fat king salmon into the other.
However, just like my dishes, atlas and college graduation suit (still fits), I thought email addresses were supposed to last forever. Same as Polaroid, IBM and Compaq computers, Toys “R” Us, Blockbuster and Sears. I guess those failures should have been my first clues that nothing lasts forever.
The next clue I missed was that some of my old dental crowns are falling out. The dentist said that happens as we get old. Another reason not to like change.
I don’t blame GCI for imposing change on 40,000 Alaskans. Fewer people are using the company’s email service, especially when Gmail and other providers are so prevalent and easy — and free. Why sell a product that produces little in return for the business other than customer calls to the service line?
I suppose it was inevitable, just as Blockbuster gave up on renting videotape movies when the world changed to Netflix CDs and, later, to streaming. Instead of walking or driving to a store to select a movie, anyone can pick a flick and click the remote all one-handed, without ever having to put down their smartphone. Or maybe you can tell your smartphone to stream to your TV. I wouldn’t know, I still think of streamers as party decorations hung from the ceiling.
So, although I am grousing and grumbling, I am starting to think about migrating to a new personal email address. Of course, I still think of migrating as something I did when I moved from Chicago to Alaska in 1976, but I guess words can change too.
But what to choose for an email address? Something that alerts people to my character traits. Something witty, like a personalized license plate. Something unique, which will not be easy — Gmail has an estimated 1.8 billion email accounts worldwide.
I have time to think about it. GCI won’t bail out of the email business until next year. Of course, I’ve already had a couple of friends warn me to start the change soon, so that I can reach out to everyone who has used my old email address for the past 30 years.
But I think I’d rather wait. Not for any good reason, other than to prove to myself I am stubborn. Some things don’t change.
• Larry Persily, a long-time Alaska journalist, is publisher of the Wrangell Sentinel, lives mostly in Anchorage, and still carries change in his pocket.
