The Card Project
So my first goal for 2016 was to Commit Not Particularly Random Acts of Communicative Kindness. More specifically, I was going to send a birthday card to every person I know on Facebook, and select people who aren't on FB. As we roll into December, I can say with confidence that I got an A++ on this one.
The spreadsheet I put together currently has 254 entries on it. Of those 254:
- 17 people did not respond when I asked for their address. About 1/3 of those are never on FB. The others apparently didn't trust me enough to send me their address, or forgot to, or something. What's odd, and potentially upsetting, is that many of those people are people I talk to all the time.
- One person sent me their address many, many months after I asked for it, because they are never on FB.
- I intentionally skipped sending cards to 23 people from FB. Most of those were relatives, a few were 'celebrities' locally and others were people I have only known for a short amount of time.
- At least 15 people did not have their birthday listed on FB, but made it into my spreadsheet when I saw that other people had posted birthday greetings to them.
- There are probably more people whose birthday I missed because it wasn't listed in their account. I never systematically went through all my friends and put them in the spreadsheet. Instead I went through each month's birthdays and added them, so if someones birthday wasn't listed and I didn't notice other people greeting them, they would not be there.
- And in the interest of full disclosure, I also ran into some people on my friends list where I thought "I have no interest in sending them a card." Most of those people got unfriended. Normally my criteria for that is "if I visited their city would I feel guilty about not contacting them," but apparently cards are a potent secondary criteria. I didn't count how many people I unfriended this way.
I have sent 191 cards to date, with seven more cued up by the end of this year. 198 cards is a not insignificant number. I sent cards to 25 states and the District of Columbia. Ohio was obviously way out in front, with California coming in second with 11 cards. Not content to remain on this side of the ocean, I also sent cards to Australia, Japan and Germany, plus one that went north over the border to Canada.
Cards are not cheap. I bought almost all of them at a Hallmark near my house. In total, 198 birthday cards cost $742.73, less the costs of four wedding cards, two retirement cards and one each of cards for Mother's Day and Father's Day. Throw in postage for 198 cards at 0.47 per first class stamp and you get a cool $93.06, and I know for a fact that I sent a more than a few cards that required extra postage. call it perhaps $815 in total birthday card related expenses. For the curious, November was the most expensive month, with $114.92 in card costs.
It could have been worse. I presciently signed up for the Hallmark rewards points, and as you might imagine I very quickly reached their platinum level where I was sent piles of coupons every month. For example, when I bought cards for December I had $16 worth of coupons. Without the coupons I expect I would have hit $1000.
I tried very hard not to buy the same card twice. However, by October I had exhausted the supply of unique cards that I was willing to purchase and I started repeating myself. Cards fall into a number of themes. Two I found somewhat disturbing as I considered them.
- "You/We are getting old and everything is falling apart." I hate these cards. I refuse to buy any of them, largely because I don't find them funny at all.
- "Celebrate by getting drunk." I purchased some of the funnier cards in this genre, but as the year went on I found more and more of them to just be depressing, since they seemed to imply that "clearly alcohol is the only reason we exist."
However, I did buy every card I saw that featured a dog in a funny hat, even if it was about alcohol.
I will say that a rather staggering number of people were very enthusiastic about the project as a whole. Pretty much everyone I told about it thought it was really cool. Many of the recipients sent me enthusiastic thanks. One sent me a thank you note! This, alas, didn't translate into a pile of birthday cards for me; I got nine cards for my birthday, or perhaps six more than usual.
That said, I will probably not do this again, at least not in this form. $815 is a lot of money that could be spent on other things, and that doesn't even take into account the time involved with getting addresses, buying cards, writing up cards and mailing cards. I spent at least 20 minutes on this every single weekend, and usually more.
What I may do instead is pick a subset of my friends to send cards to every year, and rotate that subset. For instance, maybe 2017 is fraternity brothers, 2018 is radio friends, 2019 is other college friends, etc. I haven't decided yet if I'll do this, but it would be a way to keep it more manageable. Or perhaps I'll just send cards to a core subset of my friends? I don't know.
In any event, I can safely say that I crushed this resolution.
The spreadsheet I put together currently has 254 entries on it. Of those 254:
- 17 people did not respond when I asked for their address. About 1/3 of those are never on FB. The others apparently didn't trust me enough to send me their address, or forgot to, or something. What's odd, and potentially upsetting, is that many of those people are people I talk to all the time.
- One person sent me their address many, many months after I asked for it, because they are never on FB.
- I intentionally skipped sending cards to 23 people from FB. Most of those were relatives, a few were 'celebrities' locally and others were people I have only known for a short amount of time.
- At least 15 people did not have their birthday listed on FB, but made it into my spreadsheet when I saw that other people had posted birthday greetings to them.
- There are probably more people whose birthday I missed because it wasn't listed in their account. I never systematically went through all my friends and put them in the spreadsheet. Instead I went through each month's birthdays and added them, so if someones birthday wasn't listed and I didn't notice other people greeting them, they would not be there.
- And in the interest of full disclosure, I also ran into some people on my friends list where I thought "I have no interest in sending them a card." Most of those people got unfriended. Normally my criteria for that is "if I visited their city would I feel guilty about not contacting them," but apparently cards are a potent secondary criteria. I didn't count how many people I unfriended this way.
I have sent 191 cards to date, with seven more cued up by the end of this year. 198 cards is a not insignificant number. I sent cards to 25 states and the District of Columbia. Ohio was obviously way out in front, with California coming in second with 11 cards. Not content to remain on this side of the ocean, I also sent cards to Australia, Japan and Germany, plus one that went north over the border to Canada.
Cards are not cheap. I bought almost all of them at a Hallmark near my house. In total, 198 birthday cards cost $742.73, less the costs of four wedding cards, two retirement cards and one each of cards for Mother's Day and Father's Day. Throw in postage for 198 cards at 0.47 per first class stamp and you get a cool $93.06, and I know for a fact that I sent a more than a few cards that required extra postage. call it perhaps $815 in total birthday card related expenses. For the curious, November was the most expensive month, with $114.92 in card costs.
It could have been worse. I presciently signed up for the Hallmark rewards points, and as you might imagine I very quickly reached their platinum level where I was sent piles of coupons every month. For example, when I bought cards for December I had $16 worth of coupons. Without the coupons I expect I would have hit $1000.
I tried very hard not to buy the same card twice. However, by October I had exhausted the supply of unique cards that I was willing to purchase and I started repeating myself. Cards fall into a number of themes. Two I found somewhat disturbing as I considered them.
- "You/We are getting old and everything is falling apart." I hate these cards. I refuse to buy any of them, largely because I don't find them funny at all.
- "Celebrate by getting drunk." I purchased some of the funnier cards in this genre, but as the year went on I found more and more of them to just be depressing, since they seemed to imply that "clearly alcohol is the only reason we exist."
However, I did buy every card I saw that featured a dog in a funny hat, even if it was about alcohol.
I will say that a rather staggering number of people were very enthusiastic about the project as a whole. Pretty much everyone I told about it thought it was really cool. Many of the recipients sent me enthusiastic thanks. One sent me a thank you note! This, alas, didn't translate into a pile of birthday cards for me; I got nine cards for my birthday, or perhaps six more than usual.
That said, I will probably not do this again, at least not in this form. $815 is a lot of money that could be spent on other things, and that doesn't even take into account the time involved with getting addresses, buying cards, writing up cards and mailing cards. I spent at least 20 minutes on this every single weekend, and usually more.
What I may do instead is pick a subset of my friends to send cards to every year, and rotate that subset. For instance, maybe 2017 is fraternity brothers, 2018 is radio friends, 2019 is other college friends, etc. I haven't decided yet if I'll do this, but it would be a way to keep it more manageable. Or perhaps I'll just send cards to a core subset of my friends? I don't know.
In any event, I can safely say that I crushed this resolution.