Show Notes
Patricia and Nicole chat about all the wonderful things sending and receiving snail mail has to offer as well as some of the common things holding folks back from this super effective relationship-building activity. They also make a special announcement for the first 60 Patreon subscribers!
This episode is based on Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice “Volume 1, Issue 14: The One Where I Am A Snail Mail Evangelist.”
Mentioned on the show:
- Pasta Every Day: Make It, Shape It, Sauce It, Eat It by Meryl Feinstein
- Pasta Social Club on Instagram
- Post Secret (it still exists!)
- You Feel Like Sh**
Find the full show notes and official transcript on our website: eedapod.com (You can also sign up for the podcast email list!)
Become a patron! Patreon.com/eedapod
Follow the show on Instagram & find us on YouTube
Subscribe to the ongoing Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice Newsletter
Sound editing by Jen Zink
Transcript
Music: [Music]
Patricia: Hey there, troublemakers! Welcome to Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice, the podcast for folks who would rather curl into the fetal position than lean in. I’m your host, Patricia Elzie-Tuttle.
Nicole: And I’m your VP of Podcast Affairs, Nicole Elzie-Tuttle. We are recording this show on February 26, 2024.
Patricia: Who gave you that title?
Nicole: Uh
Patricia: Did you get promoted?
Nicole: The, the CEO.
Patricia: Ah. Mmhmm..
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Gonna have to have a talk with them.
Nicole: I think it’s more just a increase in title than, uh, any actual monetary
Patricia: [Laughter]
Nicole: payment.
Patricia: [Laughter] That’s good because we can’t afford it.
Nicole: Well, talk to the treasurer about it.
Patricia: Ah, okay.
Nicole: Yeah. Oh, we got another review that we definitely want to shout out to.
This time, we got a review on Apple Podcasts from mizhaze.
Patricia: Who said that they’ve never felt so personally attacked by two nicer people.
Nicole: You’re welcome.
Patricia: You’re welcome. Also, they think I’m nice.
Nicole: They think I’m nice.
Patricia: Huh! I guess we’re not trying hard enough.
Nicole: I try very hard to be nice.
Y’all did not see the look I just got.
Patricia: I’m giving Nicole significant glances right now.
Nicole: Yeah, you are.
Patricia: As we mentioned last time, we have gotten our show up onto YouTube with some lovely art. Thanks to my sibling Jax for updating some of the art and the logos. There are cute little captions that go back and forth. You can find us at youtube.com/@eedapod. Also it is… When is this show airing? Maybe March 6 I think. And so uh we have gone through another month and I feel like I want to stay accountable around goals.
Nicole: I feel like this, since this is a recurring thing we need some sort of like jingle Pee-wee Herman Playhouse situation to go with it.
Patricia: Like a secret word, like we scream, like, Goals! Ah!
Both: Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Nicole: [Laughter]
Patricia: We did get our noses pierced.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Check that off the list.
Nicole: I got mine pierced twice.
Patricia: You did.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: You did. Looks very good.
Nicole: Yeah, so does yours.
Patricia: Thanks.
Nicole: I can’t wait till yours is healed and I can give you more significant smooches that don’t hurt.
Patricia: That don’t bang our noses together.
Nicole: [Laughter]
Patricia: Oh my gosh, comedy of errors over here. My other goals for this year, the past couple of weeks they have just gone out the window. And I’m okay with that. I’m okay with that because it gives me the opportunity to look back over all of these goals that I had kind of decided on two months ago and think about are they still things I’m interested in?
Are they still things that are relevant? Do I want to get back on track with these things? Or do some of these things need to kind of morph or just get thrown out completely?
Nicole: I actually really like this aspect of how we do goals because it’s helpful to stop and reflect and look. And like you said, figure out what is working for us. I know one that we haven’t really made any progress on is cleaning out the office, but on the other hand, we made pasta.
Patricia: Yes, I have, for folks who have been reading my newsletter for a while or even listened to me on the All the Books and All the Backlist podcast for years, I have had the goal of getting really good at making homemade pasta, which I’ve only done a couple of times. And so, a couple weeks, last week.
Nicole: It was last week.
Patricia: It was last week. I made, with Nicole’s help, we made gnocchi. A ricotta gnocchi, not a potato gnocchi. And so, I think that was just me diving into the deep end, I guess. Which, I thought it was the deep end, but it was actually really easy.
Nicole: Yeah, you just had to be gentle with them.
Patricia: Suspiciously easy.
Nicole: I thought you were going to say suspiciously gentle.
Patricia: Suspiciously gentle. I don’t like that.
Nicole: [Laughter] Be suspiciously gentle with this pasta, please.
Patricia: Mmmmm. That makes me uncomfortable.
Nicole: You know what I did miss about making pasta with you this time?
Patricia: What?
Nicole: No raccoons showed up.
Patricia: Well, now that you say that, now we have to tell people what happened the last time we made pasta. So it was in our old apartment, early in the pandemic, literally summer of 2020.
And we decided we were going to make pasta. And I also decided that I was going to make pesto from scratch. And so the apartment was smelling amazing. We had the window open because our apartment had, you know, one window. And we looked out the window just as food, like we were serving our dinner, and there was a raccoon on the fence outside of the window, leaning so far in, like clearly it wanted to come in and eat pasta with us.
Nicole: It was like right at the window screen. So it was like at the top of the window, leaning down in. I’m pretty sure she asked like, “Hey, y’all got any of that for me?”
Patricia: It was adorable, but it was also like a raccoon of that size can definitely jump through this screen. So I was a little nervous.
Nicole: It was a substantial raccoon.
Is there any other goals that you are thinking about right now?
Patricia: I think, you know, I was doing great at piano and then last week was just so busy and life happens.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Life gets in the way of, of things and so I definitely look forward to jumping back on that wagon.
Nicole: I look forward to it, too I was kind of enjoying it where I’d go like after dinner clean up the kitchen a little bit and there’d just be like…
Patricia: When the Saints go Marching In.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: With like a fake Louis Armstrong voice.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: What about you?
Nicole: I feel really good about the amount of snail mail I’ve sent this year so far. I looked back right before this, I’ve sent five birthday cards and five fun mails. Which is what I’m just calling like non-birthday, anniversary cards or whatever.
Just…
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: …other mail. That’s pretty successful for only being in the second month. I’m feeling really good about it.
Patricia: Yeah, that’s about, from when we’re recording this, that’s about a piece of mail a week.
Nicole: That’s really good. I feel good about that considering I didn’t even send this much mail last year at all.
Patricia: Well, yeah, last year was a bit of a mess.
Nicole: It was, and so I’m feeling really good about this.
Patricia: Yeah.
[Music]
Patricia: That’s what we’re going to talk about today is we have had a bunch of shows, as mizhaze said in their review, uh, that they never felt so personally attacked by two nicer people. That we want to do a bit more of a fun show today and a less heavy hitting show, but this is more on the advice side. of what we’re doing, and so we’re gonna talk about snail mail today.
Nicole: I love snail mail, and I’m pretty sure you love it even more.
Patricia: So, I know that there has been some kind of revival sometimes of, of certain things, and while I fully support people jumping on this snail mail train, it is something I have been obsessed with my entire life. My grandmother was a legal secretary and she always sent out holiday cards, as well as kept up correspondence, and then my mother had an amazing talent for picking out the absolute perfect Hallmark greeting card that was so heartfelt because she wasn’t necessarily a writer herself, but she was able to stand there in Hallmark and read every card and pick out the perfect one. And that was some of our fun, was like, hey, let’s go to the Hallmark store. And we would just get a bunch of cards and always have cards on hand. And then one of my aunties, like, for so long, even through college, even after college, she would just send me mail that would have newspaper clippings, and clipped out recipes, and clipped out comic strips from the newspaper, and mail has always been a very prominent part of my life.
Nicole: Yeah, I think there’s been once or twice where your auntie has even, like, given me a newspaper clipping.
Patricia: Yeah, that’s love right there.
Nicole: It really is. Yeah, I didn’t grow up with as much snail mail in my household as you did. It was mostly around, like, holiday cards and things like that. One that did show up regularly, though, was my, my grandmother, my Grammy.
She, every year, would make her own Christmas card. And then she would write a poem for it and send it out to the family and she did this for like 26 years and I know this because in 2017, the last year she did it, she made a little book of them and gave them out to the family as part of everyone’s Christmas gifts from her.
And it also included like a little thing she wrote, like a little nonfiction piece she wrote for like, Christmas in 1973, or something like that. So, that was what I experienced most with snail mail.
Patricia: Yeah, I was so impressed that your grandmother, into… well into her 80s, learned to use whatever design software she had on her computer and make little cards and she would write a full poem.
And this wasn’t just like a short haiku or a limerick or something,
Nicole: No it’d be a full page.
Patricia: These were lengthy poems. These are full page poems.
Nicole: And they’d have like borders on the page and of course sometimes little clip art and everything, but it was really cute.
Patricia: Yeah, I love that. I’m so happy we have that book, too, that physical book.
Nicole: Me, too. We should make it a point to go through it at, like, Christmas time.
Patricia: Yeah. Agreed. If there are other folks who are around my age, I was born in 1979, you may remember that, I think, I don’t even know where these pamphlets came from, but maybe they were from the school librarian or at school, and there was like a little trifold pamphlet or brochure or whatever, and you basically send in a dollar and your mailing address and your age, and you check off different countries around the world.
And so you’d send in a dollar for every country that you had checked off, and they would match you with a pen pal in that country.
Nicole: That is wild.
Patricia: Yeah, like thinking about it now, that is absolutely bananas.
Nicole: It really is.
Patricia: That I was just a ten year old slipping five ones into an envelope,
Nicole: [Laughter]
Patricia: and, with a self addressed stamped envelope, and giving out my address.
Nicole: Yeah, that, I’m pretty sure that probably had stopped by the time I was ten, which was what, four or five years later? So, like, I knew what penpals were, but I didn’t know how to get one.
Patricia: Yeah, in books and movies, people got them because they went away to summer camp, or their family went on a cruise, and then they made a friend.
Nicole: Yeah. My family did not take an extended summer vacation to Europe where I met the one other American kid, and we had a hilarious romp through Rome.
Patricia: No hijinks?
Nicole: There were no hijinks. My hijinks were like, riding around with my best friend on our bicycles,
Patricia: [Laughter]
Nicole: or like, staying up till four in the morning playing Sega Genesis and drinking Jolt Cola.
Patricia: Oh my gosh.
Nicole: [Laughter]
Patricia: But these pen pals from around the world, I had, I had a pen pal, I remember. I had a pen pal in the Philippines, I had one in Japan, I had one in Ireland, I had one in Australia, and I had one in New Zealand, and actually, the person who is my pen pal in New Zealand, we were pen pals for years, and it was always so exciting to get these letters from somewhere on the other side of the world.
And places I definitely hadn’t been. And also seeing like, what did their stationery look like? What did their handwriting look like? What did their stamps look like? I would, because I was so, just so mail obsessed, my mother would, kind of harass me if the mail came, and like I heard the mailbox do its little creaking click.
My mom would pretend she’s like, “oh, I’m gonna get the mail before you are.” And so I would body check my own mother as a 10 year old just to get to the mail.
Nicole: I’m really surprised at how much you let me check the mail these days.
Patricia: It took a while because I used to not let you check the mail.
Nicole: That’s true.
You would totally just go do it.
Patricia: Yep. Yep. It, it was a, it was a hard habit to break.
Nicole: [Laughter]
Patricia: But then, even, like, not only the one dollar rando, penpals from who knows where, but I remember in sixth grade, my little Catholic school traded and got penpals with sixth graders at a Catholic school in the town, like the next town over.
And so then like all through the school year, you wrote back and forth to your penpals and like the teachers would deliver them. It was literally like 15 minutes away, right? And this is before the internet, well before the internet, and then at the end of the year, we all hopped on a bus and went to the school and got to meet our pen pals.
Nicole: That is utterly bizarre to me, in, like, the school putting in the effort to do that as a kid who went to public school. But also it sounds really fun.
Patricia: It was really fun and I remember it being so fascinating because my pen pal and I got along really well, but then, like, there were heck of awkward pairings of, you know, someone.
It was, it was the, the pre-online dating of, of, uh, you know, they looked good on paper.
Nicole: Oh, there what, there did used to be a whole world of, like, mail dating.
Patricia: Oh yeah,
Nicole: M A I L
Patricia: and correspondence.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: M A I L. Yes.
Yeah. Correspondence.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Newspaper ads and…
Nicole: yeah.
Patricia: Etcetera.
Nicole: Now you just gotta swipe somewhere.
Patricia: Ughhhh. Yeah.
I also, like I’m talking about, like mail has been so much a part of my life.
In high school, I think it was my junior year in Italian class, my teacher kind of partnered with a teacher in Italy who was teaching the students English and so we all got pen pals for that English class and so I would write letters in Italian and they were to write back in English and I remember specifically my pen pal.
His name was Cataldo and he sent, like, a little school picture, and it was adorable. Honestly, I might have it somewhere still.
Nicole: Oh, you have to find it.
Patricia: Yeah, yeah, I, and it was, it was so special.
It was so special.
Nicole: That’s way better than anything we did in my French class.
Patricia: [Laughter]
Nicole: Also, Cataldo, if you’re out there and you remember being Patricia’s pen pal, please let us know.
Patricia: [Laughter]
Nicole: Or if anyone knows Cataldo, you know, Cataldo, from Italy.
Patricia: You know. [Laughter]
Nicole: Yeah. If anyone there knows him, it’d be great to get in touch.
Patricia: But speaking of, like, international, international mail, one of my dearest friends, we were resident advisors in college together, and he’s moved around to many different countries, and we hardly ever emailed.
Snail mail was our primary form of correspondence. He would write to me from Kenya, he would write to me from Australia, he would write to me from Berlin. And even now, he lives in New York with his husband and he writes to me from there. And I also have other friends, like local, one of my best friends lives like five minutes away and we still send mail every week.
And then I have other friends who still go on vacation and send me postcards from wherever they happen to be traveling.
Nicole: This is something I love about you letting me check the mail, because then I get to see the postcards. I don’t read them, but I get to see the picture on the other side, and I’m like, ooh, our friends sent us a postcard from Croatia.
Patricia: Right.
Or they’re like, ooh, they’re in Budapest at Christmas markets.
Nicole: That sounds nice.
Patricia: Right? That does sound nice.
Nicole: Although not the being in Hungary part, but…
Patricia: Ehhh…
Nicole: No offense.
Patricia: Maybe not for queer folks right now.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: But. Yeah, I just, mail is so special to me, and that’s why we’re doing this whole show today.
Nicole: Okay, so it’s pretty clear mail is pretty special to you, and like, I’m getting on board with it. I’m making an effort. I think it’s fun. It was one of my New Year’s goals was to send more and make ’em a little fancier, but why should other people send snail mail?
Patricia: So my big one is that if it is someone who loves you, it is just unexpected joy.
It is a super easy way to spread joy because people hardly get mail anymore. And it’s always like political mail or junk mail or bills. And, like, just even getting a postcard in the mail is great.
Nicole: Yeah, the feedback I’ve gotten just from even birthday cards, people are like, “oh my god, that was amazing.”
Like, I love it. It’s such an easy way to, like you said, spread joy.
Patricia: And I think something else I was thinking about is, like, people send mail to children still. They’ll send birthday cards
Nicole: yeah
Patricia: and stuff. But it stops when someone becomes an adult for some reason?
Nicole: No, most of my cards I send people are other adults.
Patricia: [Laughter]
Nicole: I think that’s what they think is so great about it, is I’m sending them birthday cards.
Patricia: Yeah, and you’re not their grandparent.
Nicole: No.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: I’m their cousin, or their niece, or things like that, or their sibling. Like…
Patricia: And speaking of snail mail, to both family and other loved ones is that it can strengthen and maintain relationships or even level them up.
There are some folks who I was acquaintances with or friends with a, with a lowercase f with, but then once we started sending each other mail and writing to each other, it leveled up our whole friendship.
Nicole: Oh, totally. I have one or two friends that this has happened with. Where, as soon as we started sending some mail, it was like, oh, we’re, we’re capital F Friends now.
Patricia: [Laughter] Yeah, it’s just, it’s so special. It’s so special, and I think even though I send a bunch of mail, I still take time with each piece.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: And, yeah, I just feel closer to people.
Nicole: I definitely feel closer to people when we do correspondence via snail mail. There is something that feels a little more personal about it.
Patricia: Yeah, personal’s a good word for it. We have learned, though,
Nicole: [Laughter]
Patricia: that people don’t check their mailboxes.
Nicole: Oh my gosh.
Patricia: Because people aren’t expecting anything fun in the mail. They’ll expect a fun, like, box from deliver like, a package of something they ordered, so they’re actually expecting it. But I found, like, some people, I literally have to text and say, “hey, I sent you mail, check your mailbox.”
Nicole: Yeah, I’ve had to do this a couple times. And what’s great about, though, is with some of my friends, they get very excited about knowing that it’s coming. I had one friend that was like, “I’m gonna check the mail three times a day.” It’s like, it only comes once.
Patricia: [Laughter]
Nicole: Otherwise, I don’t like, I guess I do understand, but I was gonna say, I don’t understand not checking the mail regularly because we check the mail like every day.
Patricia: Immediately.
Nicole: Immediately.
Patricia: Immediately.
Nicole: So excited. What’s in there?
Patricia: It is the fastest I move every day.
[Laughter]
Nicole: It doesn’t help that I sit like right next to the window where the mail carrier walks by and then puts the mail in the mailbox.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: So I see it every day, but…
Patricia: Well, and, and I do have a little moment of realness here, and I just know this from growing up. I also know that some anxiety over checking the mail, there’s, it might be based in poverty.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Right. It might be scared of bills or evictions or anything else that could be negative or stressful, and so some people, uh, have that poverty avoidance, and that’s very real.
Nicole: I totally understand that. I had the opposite reaction. I got really anxious about missing bills.
Patricia: Mm, mm hmm.
Nicole: Especially when I was first living on my own. I would get real nervous that I’d miss some sort of bill or something. And so I like, habitually checked the mail. Nothing ever fun came in it. But I was just like, so nervous about like, what if I miss something that’s important?
And I don’t know, I suddenly don’t have electricity.
Patricia: What if I won Publishers Clearinghouse?
Nicole: Ohhhhh. How many times have I won? And I didn’t check the mail because I was a university student.
Patricia: [Laughter] I think also, something that is very, very much at the front of my mind, especially since my mother passed away last year, it’s almost, it’s almost a year now, is that physical mail is a keepsake. And you know, I’m sure in our boxes and storage, or even just the boxes in the office we haven’t dealt with yet, I probably have a ton of cards from my mom.
And she used to carry around a clipboard with her and when she was sick, I needed to get some paperwork out of her clipboard. And again, this was last year. This was in 2023. In her clipboard she was carrying around a postcard I sent to her from London in 2019. And you can’t do that with, I mean, you have the emails in your phone, but no one’s looking back at their 2019 emails, and no one’s sending emails when they’re on vacation.
Nicole: There’s been one or two I’ve screenshotted, and then they end up in my camera roll of what’s probably thousands of pictures now, and I then forget that it’s even there.
Patricia: I recently saw a video online of a family who, um, there was, uh, an older woman and her husband passed away. And so it was her first Christmas without him. And so when the family was cleaning out a bunch of stuff, they found all the love letters that this grandmother and her husband had written to each other in college. So they put them all in an engraved box and gifted it to her for Christmas. And it’s like, letters are so important.
Nicole: Oh, my heart.
Patricia: Yeah, and well and that’s why I still, I’ll still leave little love letters for Nicole on her pillow, you know, when I talk about mail, I’m not only talking about stuff that I physically send in the mail, but also just handwritten letters and notes are important.
Nicole: And I have every one of them in a box. I may have a couple that I haven’t put in the box yet, but I know they’re like, right on my nightstand where I find them all the time.
So, someone in the future, when we are long gone and have to clean out our stuff, they will find a box of all of the love notes that you have left me over the years. Maybe someone will put it in a marble box and engrave it.
Patricia: [Laughter]
Nicole: And publish it.
Patricia: Pub- Oh, oof.
I don’t know if those are publishable. But I think another reason to write mail is that it is a deliberate action and effort to show that you care. That is also not necessarily capitalism that much. Like you might have to buy a postcard to send and I don’t think of buying a stamp as capitalism. But it is that deliberate effort and action. It’s the difference between buying a cake for someone, which is excellent, like I’m not going to turn down a cake someone buys for me, but it’s the difference between buying one and making a cake yourself for someone.
Nicole: Yeah, I’m not going to turn down cake either, but this is why I often prefer to send a card to people for special occasions like birthdays and anniversaries. I feel like there’s just that extra level of personal touch on top of, like, a text message or a social media post. I know we’re no longer really in the days of, like, everyone commenting on someone’s Facebook page anymore, “happy birthday.” Some people still do.
Patricia: Some people still do.
Nicole: But it’s not as big. Versus, like, putting together a card and sending it just has a little, a little extra.
Patricia: I mean, it’s definitely extra.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: It’s definitely extra at this point, but you know, I love the texts. I love the Facebook comments or posts or whatever, if I ever log into that site, but at the same time, I don’t know.
I just like the tactile of, of holding someone’s well wishes in my hand. But of course there are also a lot of common barriers that keep people from sending mail, aside from just like, not wanting to. So, one of the ways that I use snail mail with a couple of my friends is, it’s also a bit like journaling, and obviously you can only do this with people you really trust.
Sometimes I write down things that I’m having some really big feelings about and will even put on the outside of the envelope, like, “caution big feelings inside” and there is something very cathartic about writing it down and sending it off to someone who, one, isn’t going to feel like they need to fix your problem, but two, someone who, you know, can see your big feelings and react to them with loving kindness. But it’s also, like I said, very cathartic to just send it off. It feels like a bit of a release.
Nicole: I feel like you definitely need to have a certain level of established friendship in order to achieve this with someone you know.
Patricia: Absolutely.
Nicole: There is the other option though.
Patricia: The other option?
Nicole: The other option of sending heavy feelings or anything. It’s a long standing project called PostSecret.
Patricia: Oh my gosh, yeah, PostSecret. That was a huge thing back when I was in my 20s, but I think it’s still going.
Nicole: I think it’s still running. They’ve had several books published now and everything.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: That’s always an option.
Patricia: That’s always an option.
Nicole: I think it’s a fantastic project. I still love it. I don’t check in on it enough, but I have not gotten to that level of like, almost treating it like journaling or unloading big feelings.
I’ve done kind of the opposite though, where I’ve copied letters that I’m sending into my own journal
Patricia: mmmm
Nicole: so that I have a personal record of them. Also so I remember what I wrote, because sometimes I forget and I don’t want to send someone a letter saying the same thing twice.
Patricia: Oh, I almost always forget what I write, honestly.
As soon as it’s on paper and gone, it’s just like, that thought is no longer mine.
Nicole: Yeah, that happens to me regularly anyway, so.
Patricia: [Laughter] That thought is no longer mine.
Nicole: That thought is no longer mine.
Patricia: [Laughter] I think there are definitely a bunch of common reasons why people don’t write snail mail. On top of, some people might just, just might not be interested, right?
Nicole: Which is totally fair and valid. I can understand that. I think one of the first ones was what kept me from doing it a lot in the beginning, like when we first met, and for a long time. Is it just felt, it feels really high stakes. Like, it feels like snail mail is reserved for something with, like, weight or gravity to it. Like, it needs to be an important message.
Patricia: Mm. Mm hmm.
Nicole: I think the one of the cures for this, though, is really just understanding that it doesn’t have to be like a, a heavy or a lengthy missive. Like it, I struggled with this kind of like that with, in the same way that it feels like it, it’s high stakes, like.
Patricia: Yeah, like sometimes you feel like I have nothing to say that is important enough to write down.
Nicole: Yeah, that’s it.
Patricia: Or sometimes things that keep me from writing mail, even myself, is I think it has to be this huge, this huge long letter of like, these are all the things that have happened since I last wrote.
Nicole: Yeah. It doesn’t have to be some, like, overly flowery, you know, lengthy, formal letter, you know, that you don’t need, like, a, My dearest Patricia, long are the fractures of my heart that match the hours, nay, years, it takes Helios upon his chariot to cross the sky in a single day that we spend apart.
Patricia: [Laughter] I mean, I wouldn’t be sad if you wrote me letters like that, but….
Nicole: Oh. Oh, are you tempting me?
Patricia: I mean, I wouldn’t turn them down.
Nicole: [Laughter]
Patricia: I wouldn’t turn them down.
Nicole: Good lord, that will confuse the people who find our box of letters.
Patricia: [Laughter]
Nicole: There’s like, “you are so adorable, I can’t wait to smooch your face,” and then like, just the most flowery, like, Victorian era letter.
Patricia: [Laughter] I think it’s also, I remember once you sent a postcard to a friend that just had like some facts about bees.
Nicole: Yeah, it was great.
Patricia: Like the picture on the postcard had nothing to do with bees.
Nicole: No.
Patricia: You just wrote down some bee facts.
Nicole: This was, this was also something I did during the pandemic once or twice was I just would write down a random animal fact and send it to a friend on a random postcard, because you have a massive box of postcards from all the times.
Patricia: From all the time. I definitely have a, I don’t know if I’d call it vintage, but a retro postcard collection. I would always take the postcards from like Tower Records when they had those free postcard, like, kind of turnstile situations. Or like, they also used to have like, postcards in clubs and bars.
Like, back by the bathroom, there’s always a thing. And it was probably, you know, I’m, I am a silly goose. It was probably like, so you could write down your number or whatever like that for someone. But I’m like, ooh, free postcards. So I have so many. I have like, absolute vodka…
Nicole: Yeah I’ve always kind of
Patricia: adverts
Nicole: wonder where you got those from.
Patricia: And yeah, amazing.
Nicole: There’s one I think that’s in there that’s like mirrored. And it was from the like, Absolute Stellar, or Absolute Amazing, or Absolute You. Like they, they were using absolute as a weird, is that an adjective? Like, in this campaign.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: And the postcard is like a really poorly mirrored finish.
Patricia: [Laughter]
Nicole: I think one of the other things that keeps people from writing is like, a pressure to respond. I think people feel like if I write, then someone’s going to feel pressured to respond. Or like, now I’ve received a letter and there’s a lot of pressure to respond, which honestly I kind of like that a little bit.
I wish people responded to my letters and cards a little more, but….
Patricia: You know, I’ve always been very explicit that if I write to someone, there is absolutely no need to write back. Like, I get all my joy from sending out the mail and knowing that it’s gonna be a little bit of rainbows and sunshine in their mailbox amongst all the junk.
I love when people write back. I absolutely love it. But I also, like, I derive joy from the sending of the mail.
Nicole: Oh yeah, I like sending it, but I also like getting it.
Patricia: I mean, yeah, I definitely like getting mail.
Nicole: [Laughter] The other thing though, is there’s no, no immediate gratification when you send someone mail. Like, it’s not like an email, or when you like, text someone a picture. You have to wait.
Patricia: Yeah. Yeah, and people don’t necessarily tell you when they receive it.
Nicole: Well, and like we discussed earlier, not everyone checks their mail.
Patricia: However, one of my friends, I sent postcard to two of her kiddos who are both under age eight and apparently they’ve just been carrying the postcards around the house and they will sit the postcards next to their breakfast plates and just, like, have them there with them while they eat breakfast.
Nicole: Oh my goodness, that is adorable.
Patricia: So, yeah, and, you know, postcards to, like, a three year old are like, I ate pizza today, I am looking, it is very sunny here. Right? Like…
[Laughter]
Nicole: You’re not writing lengthy Victorian calligraphy.
Patricia: [Laughter] To a three year old? No.
Nicole: The other thing that kept me from doing, writing snail mail more was, I didn’t really know where to start. This wasn’t a, a habit or a hobby that I had any examples of, necessarily, other than, you know, what you see in movies, you know. I was pretty sure I didn’t need to stick a letter in a water bottle and, like, throw it at the ocean or something. But, like, did I need special equipment?
Like, did I need to buy fine Italian paper and, like, a gold tipped fountain pen? Did I need ink made from an orchid that only blooms during a full moon in the middle of winter?
Patricia: [Laughter] I’m like, what color would that… Anyway, uh, yeah, I think like there are so many snail mail accoutrement that could be purchased and I promise I have a lot of them, but also you can literally just order a pack of postcards and stamps online and then most… even if you are in a apartment building or condos or whatever, there’s usually a way for you to just put outgoing mail at your mailbox for the mail carrier to pick up for you, and you don’t actually have to go to the post office to mail things, unless it’s a package. But even then, you could get a scale and print labels at home, like, but…
Nicole: Talking about special equipment.
Patricia: Yeah, that special equipment. But you don’t need all that. You, just, a set of postcards and postcard stamps.
Nicole: And a pen.
Patricia: And a pen. International stamps if you’re sending international.
Nicole: That was definitely a, uh like, “I’ve got a tip…”
Patricia: I’ve I’ve got a tip, ding!
Nicole: …face. So if you don’t know where to start with snail mail, I mean you could just literally get a postcard and be like, “hi, I miss you friend.” But if you feel like you need a little more intention of it, for me, like I said, birthday cards were a great place to start.
I loved sending birthday cards. This was a lot of fun. I also would not just buy, like, a birthday card from the birthday card section, but we would just find, like, blank cards. And so I would pick one out that reminded me of someone, and then, decorate the inside with stickers and write, like, “happy birthday! I miss you. I hope you’re having a fantastic day.” And so many people loved it. I would put in stickers of, like, gliterally . Gliterally. Glittery.
Patricia: Gliterally . Like, gliterally.
Nicole: Like, gliterally.
Glittery balloons and like a birthday cake sticker and some streamers in there and I sometimes would get wild and use a, a brightly colored gel pen or something.
Patricia: Right, and I, I’ve even sent. birthday postcards
Nicole: yeah.
Patricia: before, like it doesn’t even have to be a full card. And, you know, that’s another barrier that we didn’t write down in our notes is like, cards from the store
Nicole: Are spendy.
Patricia: Can be so expensive.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: Like those papyrus cards that are like 3D and they need extra postage and they have like rhinestones and paper quilling and all these things. Those could be like 12 dollars.
Nicole: Yeah. Versus a postcard that you could draw on.
Patricia: Yeah. I think the other clever thing you’ve done is also getting birthdays off of Facebook and putting them onto your actual calendar.
Nicole: Oh yeah, this has been super helpful. When I decided I wanted to be more deliberate with birthdays to help do more snail mail, I went through Facebook when more people were on it and took down the birthdays of all the people I wanted to send birthday cards to and I put them on a Google calendar, because we use Gmail so that was really easy. I then added reminders for like, two weeks before, one week before, and day of. So like two weeks before my phone would just ping and be like it’s so and so’s birthday in two weeks, I’d be like “ah, I should probably start putting together a card for them” and then it would ping like one week before it’s like oh, that’s, I should really get that sent if I haven’t sent it yet. And it would do day of so I could at least, at the very least, text them or send them a message in some way or give a little phone call or something just to be like, “hey, happy birthday.”
And it has made it so easy to keep track of everyone’s birthdays and do well at that little extra touch of just like, “hey, it’s your birthday. Happy birthday.”
Patricia: And I mean, it is relationship maintenance too, right? And it’s,
Nicole: Oh, totally.
Patricia: effort. It’s effort. It’s us showing like, “hey, you are worth my time.”
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: You are worth my time and, and my attention.
And one of the things though, you have to realize is if this is new to you, do you even have your friends and family members addresses?
Nicole: Oh my gosh. Yeah. Like, I don’t keep that in my brain.
Patricia: Some people I’ve written to so many times that I do have their addresses memorized.
Nicole: That came in handy when we were visiting some people abroad.
Patricia: Absolutely. And I think, uh, oh, that’s right. You reminded me.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: We went to visit a friend in Zurich and the person at customs was questioning the heck out of us, like, “where are you going?” And I was like, “Zurich.” And she’s like, “where in Zurich?” And I was like, “my friend’s house.” And she’s like, “where does your friend live?”
And thankfully, I had their address memorized.
Nicole: Yeah.
Patricia: And that came from writing mail.
Nicole: Yeah. I don’t think she would have looked as kindly if we were like, one moment while we like, pull up a, some sort of
Patricia: An email that has the address in it
Nicole: Yeah
Patricia: or something.
Nicole: Like that would not have probably gone over well. Yeah, for friends addresses though, I think the thing that stuck out to me that you you taught me is sending winter holiday cards, which is a big tradition for a lot of people, is a great opportunity to get everyone’s addresses.
Patricia: And then to update addresses, too.
Nicole: Yeah, so this is when we like do a lot of updates and maintenance for our address book.
Patricia: Yeah, I think I am also kind of a paranoid person, and I’m just like, I need to know how to reach everyone. What if it’s the end of the world? I mean, it is the end of the world, but like, I need to know where everyone lives.
Nicole: Like, what if it’s the end of the world and you need to send them a postcard?
Patricia: Yes.
[Laughter]
Nicole: Oh my gosh, are you seeing what’s happening right now?
This is wild.
Patricia: XOXO. Stay cool.
[Laughter]
Nicole: Nicole.
Patricia: Nicole.
Nicole: Is this where we make a little announcement?
Patricia: I think so.
Nicole: So, for our Patreon subscribers, for the first 60?
Patricia: For the first 60, yeah.
Nicole: Who subscribe to our Patreon at the Helpful Helper level, which is 3 dollars.
Patricia: Which is, quite frankly, the only level we have on there right now.
Nicole: Right now.
Patricia: Right now.
Nicole: [Laughter] We will send you a rainbow prism window cling?
Patricia: Yeah, so it’s a sticker for your window. So if anyone scrolls through my Instagram posts, they will often see I put pictures of like, there are all kinds of rainbows in our house! And they come from these prism stickers that I stick on windows, and they are renter friendly, you can take them off the windows without residue.
They’re not necessarily reusable, but they give off some incredibly intense rainbows when you put them on the window with direct sunlight. So we had some made that have our little logo on it, and we would love to send prisms to our first 60 Patreon subscribers. And once we start actually getting more people there, then we can start thinking about making some more cool content.
Nicole: Do we have a couple subscribers already that we owe clings to?
Patricia: Absolutely. I’m going to send out probably a sheet so that I can collect addresses or PO boxes or whatever.
Nicole: So does that mean there’s only like 55 slots for this left?
Patricia: Well, one person already got one, so maybe there’s fifty seven slots for this left.
Nicole: Okay, so for the next fifty seven people who subscribe to the Helpful Helper level on our Patreon, we’ll send you a window cling, a window sticker, a prism. It makes very pretty rainbows.
Patricia: It does. Very instagrammable, if you’re into that.
Nicole: Yes.
Okay, so, we talked a lot about mail.
Patricia: Yeah.
Nicole: Snail mail. What do we want to make sure people take away from this episode?
Patricia: Mail is great. Write more mail. I think the U. S. Postal Service is one of the couple programs in the U. S. that I can think of that are basically socialist programs. That do something amazing and the other one is library, which I’m sure we’ll have another episode on libraries, if not multiple episodes. And I think, yeah, writing mail is great.
If you don’t know where to start, we have a P. O. box. It will be on our about page on our website at eedapod.com if you want to send us mail.
Nicole: Yeah, send us some mail. If it’s nice.
Patricia: Only send nice mail.
Nicole: Yeah, don’t send mean mail.
Patricia: I mean it could be mean if you’re like talking about someone, like tell us, tell us some of your work drama.
Nicole: Yeah. Mean Girl mail.
Patricia: Mean girl mail is fine.
Nicole: [Laughter] Make us your burn book.
Patricia: [Laughter]
Nicole: Yeah, but mail is, it can be a lot of fun, and it’s a great way to strengthen relationships without spending a lot of money. And I think that’s a really good takeaway.
Patricia: Yeah, yeah, and definitely in trying to [Sigh] divest from capitalism a bit, it’s like, what is something I can do that is also not just like buying someone something?
Yeah.
Music: [Music]
Patricia: So, for my resource today, I’m gonna spell it out because we do not want an explicit tag. It is You Feel Like S H I T Dot Com, and when I link it in the show notes, it’s actually going to use like a URL shortener so that we don’t get dinged for that, and You Feel Like S H I T Dot Com was adapted with permission off the work of Jace Harr.
It is basically an interactive flow chart for self care and checking in on yourself. So it starts with a physical check, like beginning with asking if you have eaten in the last four hours, and then you get to answer like, yes, I have eaten, I’m fine. Or I could use a snack or no, I haven’t eaten, I need a meal.
And then depending on your answer, it will either give you a tip. And then an option to move forward or just move you on to the next question. So first it checks through all the physical things like are you hungry? Have you taken your meds? Have you hydrated? Um, have you like moved your body at all? What is your current environment? Are you in a place that is safe or comfortable?
It does its best to not be ableist or pushy when it mentions exercise, and I deeply appreciate that. It then goes through a bit of a mental health check, and checks in with you about your emotions and your feelings, and of course, like this site is not comprehensive, nor should it be.
It’s not going to replace a therapist. But like if it’s 7 PM and I’m feeling like crap, it’s great to open up this website and just have a little guided check-in with myself. I think of it as a choose your own adventure but with feelings.
Nicole: Choose your own adventure but with feelings?
Patricia: Okay, your mileage may vary.
I know, I’m looking at the look you’re giving me. You’re like, oh no! But it’s a great place to start, especially when sometimes I’m like, “ugh, I feel like garbage, and I don’t know why.” So it’s, You Feel Like S H I T dot com and I will definitely link that in the show notes.
Nicole: All right, we’re at that time of the episode.
Patricia, what’s filling your cup?
Patricia: Gnocchi. My cup is overflowing with gnocchi and making gnocchi.
Nicole: Your cup runneth over?
Patricia: My cup runneth over with gnocchi.
And, like I said, it was a ricotta gnocchi. It was a cheese gnocchi. And I made it from the recipe from Pasta Every Day from the person who does Pasta Social Club.
So I, of course, obsessively watch a lot of pasta making videos on Instagram. Like half my content is like pasta content. And I will definitely link this cookbook in the show notes. It has been so helpful. It has full color process pictures in it so that you really understand how to make these pasta shapes and what to do.
Like I said, it was surprisingly easy and you know, I took that pasta leap and now I’m just like, I just want to make pasta all the time.
Nicole: I look forward to having more pasta with you, especially homemade pasta. With or without raccoons.
Patricia: Maybe without raccoons. How about you, Nicole? What’s filling your cup right now?
Nicole: Oh my gosh, it was sunny and warm the other day and I got very excited. I broke out a tank top and now I am really looking forward to warm sunny weather and tank tops and skirts and shorts and I think I’m ready for it. As much as I still love my jackets and my sweaters and my hoodies. I think I’m ready for the warmer weather now, and I’m, I’m kind of excited for it.
Patricia: I am a person who tends to enjoy the gloomier weather, but actually something that is helpful when we do get these bright sunny days, I have all of these prisms on our windows. And so like I said, our house just fulls of rainbows and it makes me okay with the sunny days, knowing that we get that.
Nicole: They will literally stretch down the hallways and coat the walls and ceilings. It is very rainbow when the sun hits just right.
Patricia: So that’s our show for today. We’d like to thank our awesome audio editor, Jen Zink. You can find her at loopdlou.com and we’ll definitely leave a link to that in our show notes.
Nicole: You can find the full show notes and a transcript at eedapod.com. That’s E E D A P O D dot com. There, you can also find a link to our Patreon, our bookshop link, the podcast email list and a link to the ongoing Enthusiastic Encouragement and Dubious Advice newsletter. You can also find us on Instagram and Bluesky at eedapod and you can email us at eedapod@gmail.com.
Patricia: We are nothing if not consistent.
Nicole: We would appreciate it so much if you would subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts that allow ratings. It goes really far in helping other people find us. Also, thanks again to mizhaze for their written review in Apple Podcasts.
Patricia: We would also appreciate anyone who can subscribe to us on Patreon.
Like we said, we will send you a prism sticker for the first 60 people. Support is going to help us keep this show going, especially without ads. You can find us at patreon.com/eedapod. In the meantime, we hope you find ways to be kind to yourself. Drink some water and read a book. We’ll be talking to you soon.
And we’re going to…
Nicole: write little love notes to each other.