I am powerless over my digital information hoarding…

Are you a digital information hoarder? If you are anything like me, in your life you have way too much information (WTMI). Information stored everywhere, physically and digitally. Facts, figures, familiar terms of endearment, even photos from family, friends and people you barely know, all tucked away in e-mails, files, *.txts, *.docs, pictures, *.pngs and *.bmps, on your hard-drive, and so on and so on…

Image by bettyx1138 via Flickr

I am seriously trying to clean up my information act–to get freedom from all of it. At least I keep telling myself that tomorrow is the day that I purge my e-mail accounts–all eight of them at last count; delete my DMs (direct messages) in Twitter; archive my in-box in LinkedIn or answer friends in FaceBook; clean up my hard drive.
Yikes, no wonder I keep putting this information purge off until tomorrow; TMI, TMI, TMI.
One reason I cannot get freedom from my information and clean up my act is that every time I try to delete e-mails, I reread the content. Today, I found a link to the most stressful US cities. The article was published sometime in September 2009 by MSN Health & Fitness. I know this because of the date on the comments–no date found in the article.
When I tried to get to the actual list of cities, it seems someone cleaned up their own information act and no link resolved. See, I told myself, if I had saved the information off into a list of my own, I would know where the most stressful places to live are. Just because information was originally found on the Web, does not mean it will be there when you go back to retrieve it.
In reality, I do not need that list. Any city I am in can be stressful for me whenever there is a plethora of information that I feel I must receive, retain and release to others, should the need arise. In order to clean up my information act–to get freedom from all of it–I understand that the first step to any recovery is identification. I think, now I am supposed to say, “I am a digital information hoarder and my hard drive is full.”
Wait, way too much information–WTMI! What? Me? No!