The month away was supposed to change me.
Sun. Space. Long walks. Manta rays gliding past like they had nowhere better to be. A proper break. A rare one. The kind where you start thinking you’ve cracked something important about life, work, and yourself.
Then I came back to my desk.
First day back. Laptop open. Coffee in hand. Slightly smug, if I’m honest. Still carrying a bit of that holiday calm. That dangerous calm. The sort that convinces you you’ve returned as a better, wiser version of yourself.
Then Outlook loaded.
3,171 unread emails.
Not a metaphor.
Not “a lot”.
A very specific, very real number.
I sat there staring at it, feeling my chest tighten in that familiar, unwelcome way. A small lift. A shallow breath. That internal voice warming up nicely.
You can’t just delete them.
What if something important’s in there?
What if this is the moment everything quietly falls apart?
This was irritating, because before I’d gone away I’d been very clear. Almost evangelical.
My out-of-office message didn’t mess about.
I said I’d be away until the 12th of January 2026.
I said urgent things should go to the team.
I said, very plainly, that I would delete everything in my inbox unread when I got back.
If something was genuinely for me and genuinely urgent, resend it on the 13th.
At the time, this felt bold. Principled. Almost heroic.
I was also on holiday.
Holiday Steve is a visionary.
Work Steve is a catastrophist with a mouse.
My brain immediately started doing what it always does under pressure. It negotiated.
Maybe just the subject lines.
Maybe just the ones marked “urgent”.
Maybe just the people who sound senior, as if importance has an accent.
What I could feel, very clearly, was fear. Not fear of missing something critical. Fear of discovering that nothing in there was actually critical to me.
There’s a difference.
I hovered over “select all” longer than I’d like to admit. Long enough to notice the physical stuff. Leaning forward. Jaw tight. Slight urge to prove my worth before the day even started.
Then I did it.
Select all.
Delete.
3,171 emails gone.
Nothing happened.
No Teams messages exploded.
No frantic calls.
No subtle sense that the universe had noticed and was displeased.
What did happen was unexpected.
Relief. Immediate and physical. Like I’d taken off a coat I didn’t realise I’d been wearing indoors for years.
Closely followed by something less comfortable.
A question.
If all of that can disappear without consequence, what was I actually carrying?
Then we had the team meeting.
They updated me on what had happened while I was away. Work done. Problems handled. Clients supported. Decisions made without drama. The business had continued, not heroically, but competently.
And there it was. The bit that landed with a dull thud somewhere between my ribs and my ego.
It turns out I am not as central to everything as my inbox would like me to believe.
The world didn’t pause.
KOAP didn’t wobble.
No one was waiting for me to return like a Victorian sea captain.
It was another manta ray moment. That same quiet reminder from the holiday. Life moves. Work moves. Teams adapt. And sometimes the story you tell yourself about how essential you are is just that. A story.
I still care deeply about the work. I still like being involved. I still enjoy being useful. But I’m a little less convinced now that usefulness is measured in unread emails.
The physical signals were there all morning. That urge to reinsert myself. To reclaim relevance. To open “just one folder” and see what I’d missed. Once I noticed it, I didn’t need to fix it. I just had to not act on it.
Eventually, it passed.
So here we are. First day back. Inbox empty. Business alive. Ego recalibrated.
Tomorrow, if something really matters, someone will resend it.
And if they don’t, that probably tells me exactly what I need to know.
Happy New Year.
