A reminder to myself (and anyone else who needs it) to keep trying

By Dear Chizuko (Becky Hollingsworth) 30 January 2025

Some of my snail mail supplies in my workspace - stamps, vintage letter holder, pens, pencils, markers. The more supplies I have on hand, the easier it is when I decide I want to send someone a card or letter.

Recently a good friend told me one of their goals for the year is to send cards and letters. Huzzah!

I replied that, speaking from experience, it can be a little more work than one might think. I recommended starting small and being sure to consider available time and mental capacity. Otherwise, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and find yourself not achieving what appears on the surface to be a simple goal.

Perhaps writing someone a letter seems like a simple and easy task. Please keep in mind, however, that the goal of “Write a Letter” probably involves the following considerations and subtasks:

• Do I have the letter recipient’s current mailing address?
• Is my handwriting legible or should I type my letter?
• What am I writing on? I will probably need some paper or a card. Do I have those on hand, or do I need to make or purchase something? Do I have envelopes?
• What am I writing with? I need a pencil or a pen that won’t run out, or a word-processing program to type a letter. If I type a letter on the computer, do I have everything I need to print it?
• Do I have sufficient postage? I may need to purchase stamps online or go to the post office.
• What do I want to say and how do I want to say it? How much information to give about myself, and how much to ask about the recipient? How much space do I have to write?
• Do I have enough time and mental bandwidth to sit down, collect my thoughts, and write something? Or am I feeling too stressed and overwhelmed to make time for this activity?

These are the first things that popped into my head. This may seem like overthinking, but everything listed here will probably need to be addressed in the process of writing a letter or sending a card to someone.

This isn’t to say that writing a letter is complicated! I just think it’s important to acknowledge that MOST things are more complex than they might first seem when we initially have the well-intentioned idea to create a goal for ourselves or to add something to our to-do list.

How many things continue to stay on a task list because it is more of a project than a task? Rather than getting discouraged and scrapping the goal, I definitely recommend considering the smaller tasks needed to complete the goal and adding those to the list as well.

New tasks will often come up as you go, but breaking a project or task into smaller subtasks isn’t making it more complicated - it’s just making it more realistic.

Recipes are a good example of this. I might have the goal to “Make A Cheese & Broccoli Quiche,” but looking at a recipe gives me a pretty quick snapshot of the tools, items, and subtasks involved. And remember, recipes start out assuming you already purchased and prepped all your ingredients (measured spices and chopped veggies, for example) so even a recipe doesn’t give you the full complex picture.

All of this is to say…