It’s time to send someone a card

Transcript:

Hello and welcome to Fortune Cookie, a podcast hosted by me, Wendy.

Wow, November was a really insane month for me and I’m so looking forward to catching a breath in December. I hope wherever you are listening in from, you’re doing ok and if you want, you can take a deep breath in with me through the nose ok actually yeah let’s do that together… out through the mouth. One more for fun, in through the nose, out through the mouth. I’ve been dealing with some lower back pain and got two exercises recommended for me to combat the fact that I’m hunched over my computer or sewing machine all day. One resembles a backstroke for all you who know how to swim, and the other is just tilting my head up so the muscles on the back of my neck can get a little break. I feel like my posture has really deteriorated over the last two years so I might, I might have to make that the new years resolution. Stand tall!

Since the last episode about Goodbyes, I have put together a little Instagram just for you podcast listeners. It’s a place you can share and chitchat about the different topics we cover, and I’ll be there to reply too! Even if you have nothing to say just say hi, drop your most recently used emoji, I love all signs of life, love hearing from you, that’s something really missing in contrast to youtube videos and the lively comment section. You can even drop by right now, it’s @fortunecookiewithwendy (repeat). Click on any of the posts that catch your eye and say hi! I will say hi back. @fortunecookiewithwendy and if you want to say more than hi, tell me your fave cookie flavours.

I got to speak at two different conferences in November and it was so exciting to talk to students, small business hopefuls, and answer all the questions. I try to share whenever I do these speaking engagements so if you don’t want to miss the next one just keep an eye on my IG stories I guess. In one of the workshops, I got a question about how I came up with the name fortune cookie for my podcast. That’s an overlap of a few things that I want to share here but I’ll try to paint a bit of that Venn diagram. Fortune cookies are associated with Chinese cuisine and I’m Chinese, but it’s also a North American invention and I’m born and raised in North America, and then lastly they always contain a little word of wisdom or anecdote, and I find that wraps up, in a cookie, the main things I want this podcast to encapsulate. A place for little stories, words of wisdom from my experiences, and an opportunity to dive into my heritage.

[window opens, outdoor ambience heard]

Instead of reading a letter in this episode, can we talk about snail mail in general? I just brought home a super cute set of Canadian stamps and I’ve been trying to set aside an hour every day after breakfast to write some holiday cards, This is something I’ve adapted since I learned the hard way that I can’t pump out all my cards in one day. Back when we got married, Dan and I did write everyone’s thank you cards in advance so that when you got to your assigned dinner seat instead of a name card you’d get a personalized letter from us. We did this for about 180 people so if you’re a logistics person I feel like you can already tell what an insane marathon that was. We genuinely liked everyone who was at our wedding so it’s not like we were short on words of appreciation, but I still drafted up a bunch of cues to remind us what kinds of things to thank people for as our brains got fuzzier. One of my best friends flew in a few days early and sat nearby sealing all our cards with a wax seal while we had Beyonce’s “Countdown” blasting at full volume. I can’t believe we signed ourselves up for that, but then It felt so good when people told us that they couldn’t believe their card was just for them, they had to compare with a few people beside them to prove we didn’t just write the same thing for everyone. And I’m just so happy anytime I can reaffirm to someone how I really feel about them. That they are important, loved, special, and treasured. I don’t know if snail mail, cards, or letters are your thing, but I hope you can agree it feels so good to get them. When so many letters are computer-printed mass mailers, this internet provider and that insurance deal and unfortunately those scammers trying to prey on uninformed people… a handwritten card, even the dimensions of the envelope alone, stands out so much like a shining beacon of hope that there’s a human out there who cares enough to sit down and put a few thoughts on paper for you. Not trying to rip you off or sign you up for some new thing, just telling you things like happy birthday, Merry Christmas, thank you for your care, we’re getting married, we’re having a baby, and I’m doing ok in this faraway country.

[outdoor sounds fade]

Which brings us to today’s fortune cookie: it’s time to send someone a card

There was one teenage summer camp where we took a trip to the local Canada Post sorting office and I still picture that big warehouse with all its trays and belts and computers when I get snail mail. If my memory is correct, I learned that the reason we put stamps in the upper right corner is that the border of the stamp reflects UV light and that’s how a disorganized pile of mail can be run through a machine and come out all facing the same direction on the other side. We watched the machine suck up all the envelopes into a series of belts, some belts turned envelopes over, some belts rotated them clockwise, and one by one they came out with all the stamps in the upper right corner. Then the envelopes fly through the next machine that reads all the handwritten addresses. It relies on a database of all the different ways people write their B’s and Q’s and 7’s, and only a few get separated for manual reading by the post workers. When you think about the whole network of planes, trains, boats, and trucks that make it possible for me to drop a card in a box here and show up a few days later on someone else’s doorstep it’s pretty mind-blowing. If you’ve never listened to 99 percent invisible, they have a great podcast episode on how the post built America.

From that episode, I learned that sending personal letters in North America used to be a privilege only available to the wealthy. And that before stamps were invented the recipient was the one who paid to get their mail. So if they weren’t interested in it or couldn’t afford it, piles of mail would just sit at post offices unclaimed. On top of that, before personal mailboxes you had to go to the office to collect your mail, possibly standing in long lines just to find out how much money you owed, or to find out that no one sent you anything. Now with a little sticker that you don’t even have to lick any more, you can prepay for a letter’s entire journey and if you’re the recipient all you need to do is go to your mailbox and open the envelope.

As a kid I used to have pen pals. There was one friend who lived in the next largest city, about a 3-hour drive away, and we would send letters back and forth. I can’t even remember what we’d talk about, probably complain about our little brothers or about some mean person at school, sharing whatever was on our mind like our favourite foods or what happened yesterday when we went out to play. Before those email chains where you had to email a joke to the first person on a list and then forward the email to 5 friends to continue the chain, I had participated in snail mail chains. There was one where you got a letter with a bunch of cute stickers, and you had to send a letter to someone higher up in the chain with a few stickers, and then send letters to 3 friends with stickers hoping that they’d return the favour and you’d get more stickers soon in return. The whole thing sounds like a mess but if you’ve ever seen these chains you know what I mean. If we went to China I would buy the prettiest stationery. Some of them had weird attempts at English with awkward grammar or the occasional typo. I still have maybe too large of a stationery stash, accompanied by maybe too large of a box of cards I’ve hoarded. One of these days I’ll go through it for the memories and try to create some kind of order. 

Overall I operate under the policy of don’t assume people know how you feel about them, tell them! If you’re thankful, say so! If you think someone’s cool, let them know! If you’re proud of someone’s achievement, they probably would love to hear that! Life can get so lonely in our heads sometimes, like no one sees us, understands us, or appreciates us, but it’s just not true and we have to fight that negativity together. I think I’ve grown to treat birthdays and the holidays as my annual appointment to make sure I remind my friends and family why I think they’re great people, and if that feels like a foreign muscle I can assure you the more you flex it the more natural it feels over time. Encourage one another, build each other up. I can’t think of a year in my life where a kind and generous word means as much as it has in 2020. And there is no time pressure, honestly. If you wait until the new year you might even be doing your local post a favour. And for those of us that experience long chilly winters we know how bleak February and March can be. As we get through this holiday season and into the new year, my hope is that you can feel like there are people you are supporting, and that there are people supporting you. It takes two to build structures like that, so dig into your feelings a little and tell someone you’re there for them.

If you liked this episode, subscribe, give us a five-star rating, and follow us on Instagram @fortunecookiewithwendy. That’s where you can share your thoughts and see what others think! We’ve got a new episode every month, and a secret bonus episode at withwendy.com for my supporters. Go to withwendy.com and click on Darlings to find out more about the secret content for supporters.

All our previous episodes are on Spotify, Apple podcasts, and my website withwendy.com. Fortune Cookie With Wendy is edited and produced by me, with assistance from Michelle Choi who also designed our tasty cookie cover art. Thank you Musicbed for providing all our music, and thank you so much for being here and opening up with us, talk to you in the next episode, bye-bye!