So I decided last week I was going to let go of my email notifier to get less dependent on that little blue envelope and stop wasting so much time with instant checking.

It’s had…mixed success.  I turned off the notifier no problem.  And it HAS cut down, mostly, on how much I’m following the siren song of my email.  But there’s the minor matter of the fact that I use Google Talk to keep up with my closest friends and there’s no way to turn off the little “M” that pops up in the task bar when you have mail.  Turning off mail notifications means you don’t have a pop up notifier.  But I still see that M and I have to follow…like the friggin’ Pied Piper.

What I need is a way to use Google Talk without that notifier.   I didn’t want something web-based because I keep inadvertently closing chat windows because you have to keep your browser open.  So I went hunting.  And I found Pidgin.

I’d forgotten about Pidgin.  It’s a universal chat client that allows you to have all your different accounts in one place.  I used it a lot back in college when I had friends on AIM, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, and others.  I don’t use anything else these days other than Google Talk, so I hadn’t had need of that feature before.  But you can sign in to as many or as few accounts as you want (including Groupwise for work or Facebook if you’re into that).  And you can opt in or out of mail notification.  So I downloaded and installed it and I opted out.  I’ll do the same thing on my laptop at home and I think this will finally allow me to cut the strings on my email addiction without having to give up my link to writing buddies I might be running sprints with.

Manageable.

Baby steps.