Since Sunday’s article, the amount of reader emails has unsurprisingly increased about tenfold. I’m happy to admit, I love hearing from readers – as someone who regularly spews the contents of her life onto the internet, I find nothing more validating than receiving comments, opinions, diatribes, complaints and personal stories of others in response. The sense of connection, even in cyberspace, is gratifying to all involved. If someone has taken time from their presumably otherwise-productive day to write me, the least I can do is respond, so I generally do. However, due to the massive number of emails coming in, combined with the fact that I am still (somewhat miraculously) employed, I wanted to clear up a few general matters to save time for everyone (especially me):

To all requests for dates/solicitations for affairs/marriage proposals: Thank you, I’m flattered, but unavailable. While Boyfriend has been incredibly proud and unfailingly patient throughout all of this, he’s starting to get slightly irate. I think it was the half-naked photo sent in by “BigdaddyT428″ from Tucson that pushed him over the edge a bit.

To all law school professors: I am instantly intimidated when you identify your title, and I agonize over my responses, proofreading every line about 30 times. So please be understanding if I take a few days to get back to you, and don’t let it affect my final grade.

To all law firm partners: Understand how bizarre it is for me to receive personal emails from a partner. Truly a Twilight Zone experience. I’m tempted to forward them to all my friends, so we can print them out and stand around gazing at the page in a wide-eyed circle, openly marveling at this tangible proof of actual partner humanity – but rest assured I never do.

For those who send in anything to the effect of: “I know who you are, I went to school with your cousin’s ex-boyfriend, we met at a party once, etc. etc” – if you in fact know me, and are someone with whom I want to personally correspond, you would presumably know and use my personal email address. So please do.

And if you are a stalker, sociopath, anti-blog activist, anonymous misanthropist or deeply corroded and embittered attorney sending me threats, attempts at blackmail, cruel taunts or hate mail of any type, please be so kind as to fuck off. Thank you.