Letters of Appreciation

When in school, I fixated on developing my handwriting. I loved to play with my font, rounding my vowels, making squat characters across the lightly lined paper. I would sit and write in cursive, discarding piece after piece until my print was picture perfect. My desk had three piles of paper, fresh pages on the right, scrapped pages on the left, the current work of art sandwiched in between. I progressed, perfecting each crossed T, discarding each not-so-sculpted capital D.

It was my pride and joy.

Nowadays, we have very little reason to write. When's the last time you wrote someone (excluding texts, comments, or emails)? When's the last time you jotted down an idea? Even our checklists and calendars have an app these days, our address books are replete with dot coms and are missing zip codes.

My script is still my pride and joy.

When preparing to leave London, I wrote Rick a little sentence or two every day, saved in a jar. As with my mood, my script would become wild and nonsensical, illegible to most. When he opens a new note, he gets better acquainted with my crossed Ts, my capital Ds. In time, I hope he can read through it all with ease. But why is this important to me?

Just as I treat colouring books and perforated paper as emblems of my youth, I treat my script as another asset to my personality. Just as my demeanour would inform on my character, my letters would likewise tell their own story. Finding and loving my script was a part of becoming myself. Sharing that script with others extended just how much of myself I was willing to share with those persons. Imagine your funeral, and those there to support you could not recognise your handwriting. It's not the end of the world, but it is sad somehow.

The Thing about Processing

I watched a documentary recently that claims around 10% of humans are proficient at multitasking. This information is not news to me, but the fact is, we so vehemently deny our incapabilities. When we are listening to a podcast and reading emails, when we are texting and driving, when we are cooking and conversing, we must always pause our attention to one thing to focus on the other (if anyone's tried to speak to me while I'm navigating, I will undoubtedly stop all conversation until I've successfully gotten off at the correct exit).

When we continuously switch between work emails and fb updates, we break up our thought processing and produce less focused work. Even when unable to sleep, we try to distract our minds by reverting to our phones. What we are really doing, is detracting from our sleep by reigniting our attention.

Working from home has been an interesting journey for me. You must constantly refuel engagement with the task at hand, but you have no social pressures to finish one task at a time, let alone focus on one task at a time. Writing this blog alone, I've responded to one email and checked the alert for a second email. When I'm singing, or dancing, or writing, my dad will yell to me "will you help me a second?" or better yet, tell me something about my technique (because he is master of all these things, of course). Point is, I have constant distractions that minimize the quality of my work. 

I think it's high time we reflect on this and infuse our lifestyles with change. We are out of practice with focus. We invite distractions. We flip through channels, we scroll through tweets, we check our phones at stoplights. We answer calls at dinner tables, we answer texts at dinner tables, we answer emails at dinner tables, and the question in the air (from the company at our dinner tables) goes overlooked.

We are heavily misguided.

Moving back to the USA, I have not upgraded my cellphone plan to include data. This means no iMessage, WhatsApp, FB, Twitter, Emails, and Instagram until I'm signed in to wifi. What does this mean? If I need to speak to you, I must call. Moreover, if it's important enough to you, you will call. Being without a data network is revitalizing, but it's also anxiety-inducing. I need to warn friends to just call if they need, because I fear a slew of "I'm running late. I'll probably be there around 6:45. Oh man, there's a lot more traffic... I'll probably be there at 7:15." When's the last time a friend actually owned up to the agreed time to meet, rather than treated their phone as a crutch to get away with tardiness? Or even better, get out of a commitment altogether?

I personally send a lot of "leaving the house now, should get there in fifteen minutes" texts. Why can't I just leave with twenty-five minutes to spare, just in case there's traffic? Why can't I just be there slightly early? Moreover, if I haven't received a text like this, I automatically assume that my friend is running late, because nowadays everyone sends updates just because. It's infuriating.

I was reading a collection of letters from Leonard Bernstein, composer extraordinaire. He would write letters to his pals, saying things like, "Oh please join me at the Opera House, Friday at 6pm. I'll be there to see some new writing and I think you'd really like it. I'll be there to greet you, we could go catch a drink before the show. Don't mind getting a ticket, I will get one for you. Don't be late. Remember, Friday at 6."

He literally wrote letters to friends, knowing that they'd just show! And show up on time! This lifestyle is unheard of nowadays. If you are inexcusably on your phone during our catch-up, I will feel slightly slighted. As I sit there, absorbing the ambiance of the restaurant (or park or wherever we've agreed to meet), you then say "Sorry! It was my [insert significant person in your life here]." Now wouldn't it be better if you either called/texted that person back later in the evening saying "Sorry! I was out with [significant person, aka Sal] this evening!" I'm sure that person, who didn't go through the trouble to meet up with you, won't mind so much. They'll live. And perhaps, they'll adopt a healthier outlook on their friendships and the importance of attendance.

Letters of Appreciation, Revisited

When traveling on a wifi-less megabus, I was forced to entertain myself sans internet. I had finished the book I was reading, so I whipped out my notebook and began to write. So here it is.

1) Write to John and tell him how courageous he is to have experienced what he has but allowed other people to love him.

2) Write Jun. If anyone has set goals for himself that were completely wrong, it's Jun. Thank him for being true to himself.

3) Thank Mom for being polite, kind, driven, joyful.... Tell her that you'll try too.

4) Riccardo. Thank him for his constancy, his commitment. Tell him it's okay to move on, together or not.

5) Tell Dad thanks for his advice. Tell him thanks for demanding much. Tell him it's all going to be okay. Tell him you'd like him to learn to say sorry.

6) Tell Gilday she's gorgeous and loved.

7) Tell Tat to trust her gut and keep working towards greatness.

8) Tell God you're sorry.

9) Tell Mark you love him.

10) Tell Dave you want him to have a family.

11) Tell Phil you love him. Tell Charley she's creative and kind. Tell Griffin he's so important.

12) Tell Van you love her.

And that's it.