GoodByWeekly #4: Bring back the postcard & Target tells you
Dave's back and I'm coming in with the things that have made me smile in the past month and hopefully give you some fun ideas to lighten your world.
Bring Back the Postcard
Already going into this, I'm going to sound hypocritical. I am not known as a writer or a reader, yet here I am putting this together which is also probably still confusing to most of my friends reading this. I never received postcards as a kid, we did a Christmas card sometimes, but I never really loved doing the photoshoot to my mom's perfectionist eye for that either. But flash forwards to undergrad and a postcard from a friend during summer break was one of the most precious things to receive in the mail. There is still something so special about a hand-written letter that I can't see technology ever replacing and if anything it makes the value of a hand-written note even higher so buy in now.
One of the funniest stories was when my friend Annie sent me a postcard and it signed off with a little "<3 Annie". This is a normal signoff for Annie, but since I was living at my parent's house at the time, my mom read it first and then for a period of a few months thought I was dating her which was honestly hilarious. Jokes aside, I'm going to try to start writing and sending more postcards to people that I don't see as often to stay in touch because back then it had a ton of impact and I recently got another one from Austin when he was gone for a bit and it made me smile and remember how nice receiving a postcard is. So for all of you, I challenge you to send a postcard to a friend who you haven't talked to in a while because it will land 1000x harder than a text message.
Target Tells You
Asides from getting a postcard, I have also done a little bit of shopping (and some buying) to lighten my mood this month. I will bet money (and I don't gamble) that you've never gone into a Target or Target equivalent and been tempted to buy things that weren't on your list. Last month, me and Austin took a trip to the target with our one item in mind, and a little bit of a mental budget for what else we were allowed to buy, and some mental rules around what we could buy to brighten our week. We went because we each wanted to get some frames for art to hang. The art I hung up was a map of Palestine and a map of California, both places that feel like home to me through my roots and then my life now from a 1944 World Atlas.
Having these above my desk brings my room together and is just a piece of me on my wall. Back to Target. When we went to buy those frames, we also got a couple of candles and I got a fuzzy blanket so that I can rot on the couch even comfier than before and that is what Target told me to get and has significantly improved my weekend chill time since then. Now before you come at me with the "wait are you just promoting retail therapy?" questions... kind of. But it's less about having the item and more about being able to structure a trip to the store to allow for some additional spending responsibly. Target Tells You is a trip to Target with at least one other person. Here's the rules:
- You must go with an intended purchase
- You must have a defined budget for that thing you want plus a little more for the extra
- You get bonus points for bringing a friend
Being able to structure unintended "guilty" purchases and weaving that into a shopping trip will help maximize the value of the purchase. Stores like Target are designed to make you want to buy things you don't need so if you (not every time) but sometimes make it a game and go it with an allotted budget, you can regulate and maximize those shopping trips. Plus, use it as a time to bring a friend and replace a coffee chat with a Target Tells You!
Another idea is if you don't want to spend, make a trip to Ikea, because that will 100% do the same thing for you and you don't have to buy anything there at all, it's just a trip that is not integrated in my personal schedule. One time Austin and I went to Ikea, bought a whole built and returned table and played the floor is lava carrying it home because in SF, the floor is piss and that's almost just as bad. That whole trip was chaos on another level and maybe we'll talk about it on the pod sometime.
Habibi Funk
My friend Nadira shared this playlist with me last summer and I just recently revisited it as a background playlist for when I was cooking the other weekend. It's groovy, fun, and super different from my normal rotation and has been a nice vibe for me and I'd like to share it with all of you as well.
Keep doing what you all love to do and make your daily activities fun wherever you can! Maximize being Good By Tomorrow.
✌️