Beau's Blog

On November 30, 2023, I walked to my local post office in Tokyo, bought 30 stamps, mailed 30 postcards and hoped modern international mail would do as promised.

BACKSTORY

One day while browsing the vast sea of the interwebs, I stumbled across a blog post titled “Challenge-a-Day”. Unsurprisingly, it tickled me (if you’re reading this, there is a very good chance it will make you grin too) and briefly mentions the idea of postcard a day. I’m a cheesy, sentimental guy and so the idea of reaching out to people I care about each day makes me smile. A smile was all it took to go forth and create some rules for my challenge.

RULES

Starting on November 1, each day for 30 days I will write a postcard to someone.
The specific person I write to must be determined on the day of writing the postcard.
Each postcard and person must be unique.
Each recipient must be someone I know and like.

PREPARATION

To get my list of recipients, I posted on Facebook and Instagram on Oct 24th asking for addresses to get people to self select in. Surprises can be nice but ideally I want to send postcards to people who truly want them. I also was super curious how many people would opt in.
There was a fun mix ranging from close friends I’ve spent time with in the past year to some unicycle friends I hadn’t seen in over 5 years!
I ended up supplementing this list with people who let me stay with them when I was in the US last summer.

DURING NOVEMBER

Each day during November, I had a few things to manage.
1. Have at least 1 fresh postcard available -> ideally several options…
2. Have a postcard that “fits” whoever is randomly selected
3. Make time and space to write a decent postcard

Both in order to have postcards available on hand as well as to make sure I would have 30 unique ones, I ended up buying batches of postcards from different places.
To kick things off, I went to a couple stores in Tokyo and bought some autumn/holiday/etc postcards.
When camping near Mt. Fuji one weekend I was able to pick up a handful featuring Mt. Fuji.
Later in the month, I shinkansened to Kyoto and found some featuring famous local landmarks.

Buying them was funny since I was looking for balance while purchasing. I didn’t want to be searching for postcards every other day but I also didn’t want to overcommit to any one store and reach 30 too early since I wanted diversity in the collection of postcards.

On each day, I went into the Google Sheet with the list of <= 30 people and used the random() function to pick out someone. Then I went through my supply of postcards and did my best to pick one that made sense for the person.

Matchmaking was fun – Here are a few examples!
– Christine the photographer will definitely appreciate the aesthetically pleasing Fushimi Inari drawing.
– Rob and Jan aren’t afraid to get silly and in my mind at least would enjoy an elf on a derpy hippo.
– Kristina loves green and mountains so the green Mt. Fuji postcard clearly goes to her (pretty much decided that when I bought the postcard).

Predictably, I wrote most often at my table in my studio apartment. Other locations included:
-Cafes 5
-Friend’s House in Kyoto 3
-Tent 2
-Shinkansen 2
-Coworking Space 1

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BY THE NUMBERS

2 recipients I met through work
3 recipients are family members
5 destination countries
10 recipients I met through unicycling
16 people self selected in
19 postcards were confirmed received – I made no proactive effort here
30 days of postcards
$54 USD on stamps and postcards – assuming FX rate of 1 USD = 150 JPY
3000 yen for stamps
5130 yen on postcards

WHAT I LEARNED

I like writing daily even if it isn’t purely for myself.
I’ve journaled most days for a few years now but this was different and also good.
I enjoyed the daily habit of forcing myself to focus on someone in my life who matters to me.

Handwriting feels better than typing. It feels meaningful.

Coming up with a plan and then following through on it for each of 30 days (and more) is satisfying. This is less of something I learned here but something that continues to be true for me.

My “postcard formula”
– Hey I’m writing to you from X (usually my studio in Tokyo but often elsewhere)
– Here’s what I did recently OR here’s what I’m about to do
– Optional: reminisce about shared experience
– Hope life is going well

FINAL THOUGHTS

This was fun, wholesome and satisfying yet did not feel terribly rewarding.

Maybe this was not quite hard enough, not quite easy enough… but in an awkward no man’s land?

In short, this felt good, not great. 

I learned some things and believe I contributed some positivity to the world. This is aligned with who I intend to be and feels right!