This is why I save email

I try to convince people that saving emails - all your emails - is important, but it falls on deaf ears whenever I speak of it. I accept that. But every now and then a thread (PDF) comes along that proves it is important.

I've known all along that for all intents and purposes, your email address is an unintended journal of your life - and much more so than most people realize. Girls you've dated, forums you use to post on (notification replies are sent in email), blogs you commented on, things you've bought, things you've sold, communication from friends, communication from ex-friends, co-workers and on and on and on. It's all in your email.

To even think to just simply hit a key and trash that is unthinkable as far as I'm concerned. ARE YOU NUTS?

"Yeah, but there's some stuff in there that reminds me of when things were not-so good and I'd rather not remember that."

You will totally regret deleting that stuff. Seriously. Don't do it.

Every time I've lost email it absolutely floored me in a real bad way. Three times I've lost a ton of email and each time it happened it really, really ticked me off because there was absolutely no way I'd ever get it back. All those memories. Gone forever.

It honestly irks me how some people consider all the stuff we do in our digital lives to be complete throwaway material.

The above linked thread is about Gmail. Many of the comments there are from people who have been regularly using the service since 2004 when it was brand new. That's SIX YEARS of stuff. Your stuff. And you want to delete that? Are you KIDDING? Seriously?

Maybe someday people will realize that digital history is real history, and you need to save it. Considering it costs nothing to do and it takes almost zero effort, you really have no excuse.