I made an after-death email that went out before I died, that led to an extremely awkward situation.

This starts about six months ago.

I caught a pretty bad cold that had me in bed for a few days.

At the time, I kind of got it in my own head and convinced myself I was probably a day away from dying of the pandemic disease.

I had heard all of these terrible stories about people being unable to talk on ventilators having

final Zoom calls with their families. I didn't want to go out like that, so I set up a dead man's

switch. For anyone unfamiliar with the term, it's basically anything that

activates when it stops getting input from the user. Common uses are engine cutoffs on the machinery,

or that little clip thing on treadmills that pulls loose if you fall off. A less common use is

threatening hostages with an explosive device that will automatically go off if you get killed by police

snipers. If you've seen a movie where someone is blackmailing someone else and says the

information will go public if anything happens to them, you get the idea. So I'm lying, sick in bed,

and I write a series of emails to various friends and family, telling them how much they meant to me,

thanking them for supporting me,

among other things. The email to my wife has lists of all my passwords and other info she might

need to deal with my passing. My wife is also pregnant, so I left behind a message and advice

for my unborn child. I subscribed to a system where I get a link emailed to me once a month. If I don't confirm

that I'm still alive by clicking it, after a set amount of time, the emails go out. A few days

later, I was feeling fine, and the whole thing now seems a lot more silly. I figure I'll keep it

active. There's always a chance I'll get hit by a bus or something and I liked the idea of having

a final goodbye. Over the next few months, I click the link every time it comes in and on several

occasions I add more emails since I have more time. You can probably guess where this is heading.

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