The idea of having a month of thanks came to me one day when Leigha and I got a thank you letter from her sister, Nicole. I’ve always been impressed that she writes these cards/letters/notes. I think of this as something that people did fifty years ago, before the onset of the internet. It made me start to wonder why people, in general, don’t write them anymore. The only thing that I could come up with was that technology has made it easy to de-personalize. Why take the time to hand-write a letter when you can just e-mail it? Or even more, text it to them. So I decided that I should take a month where I write a letter a day. With Thanksgiving being in November, it made sense to do it then.
Next, I set about coming up with a list of thirty people. Initially, this seemed like a big task; thirty people are a lot. On the first run, I easily came up with about twenty five. Then I added some famous people, whose work has inspired me. (Stephen Spielberg, Robert Rodriguez, Kevin Smith, Ben Folds, T.C. Boyle) Then I decided that I would only write to people that I actually knew. As I thought about it a bit more, I changed my criteria. I decided to make the list as one that had people that were the most important to me at some point in my life. This meant that I had to locate a few people that I hadn’t talked to in a long time. People that I had lost contact with.
Once I started to write the letters, I realized that it was going to be twice the work than I had originally thought. Not only did I hand-write the letters, but then I had to also type them up. In doing so, I came across many misspellings and grammatical mistakes that were too late to change on the original letters. This left me a bit discouraged because I also thought of other things that I would like to write to them. Then I figured that not only would it give me something to talk to them about later, it was also real. I was writing as if I was talking to them. The letters are very conversational, a bit different than my writing. I wasn’t going to go back and polish up the letters.
As I was typing up the letters, I realized that there were several themes that ran though my them. First, I noticed that I am really impressed when people go for their dreams. When they actively take steps towards doing what they really want to be doing. I think that this is because I am really slow and somewhat over-calculated in doing these things myself. Perhaps, I am just too scared to do them. So kudos to all of you that can jump right in. Second, I noticed that I make friends with people that like to play. Perhaps this explains why I have always like kids and have been drawn to fatherhood my entire life. I’ve always know that my playful nature is one thing that makes me easy to get along with.
It also came to my attention that I was self-editing as I wrote the letters. I am just like anybody else that blogs. I am open about my life, and not afraid to share things about myself, even if they aren’t always the most flattering details. But not everybody is like this. Knowing that I was going to be posting all of these letters, I omitted certain details, sometimes talked in more general terms, or left things out all together. When I was writing to a person that is open like me, I wasn’t as worried about talking about embarrassing, yet funny occurrences. While I was censoring, because I was writing the letters, I was able to be more honest and say things to people that might be difficult to say to somebody’s face. I found it cathartic to tell people sorry, or that it’s okay. There were several times, as in the case of both of my kids’ letters, that I was emotionally overwhelmed as I wrote their letters. I read both of their letters to them, but they were much too young to understand what I was talking about for many of the things. I fantasized about giving them both a copy of their letters when they graduate high school.
As I started to post these letters, I couldn’t figure out a pattern as to which letters were read more than others. I thought that the letters to my wife and kids would be well-read, but I didn’t know if people would read everybody’s letters or just their own. Or only the people that they knew. Then I realized that I was the only person in the world that had a personal connection to all thirty people on my list. Then complete strangers started to read the letters. I had never considered this possibility. As it turns out, I wasn’t the first person to come up with the 30 Days Of Thanks. In fact, there is an entire website devoted to it. I don’t know how it works, but through the power of the internet, people started to find my site because of the letters. If you search either Google or Yahoo for “30 Days Of Thanks”, I would have at least one entry come up on their first page. As a blogger, this is pure gold. 
The letters that I wrote were sent out to seven different states and three countries. The list was almost an even split between family (16) and friends (14). There was a large presence from my college years. The parking department, where I worked for five years exactly as a student had eight recipients. Some of my greatest friends came from the failed attempt to start a fraternity. Four people were from this, with two more as potential to join before we were disbanded.
I have to say that I was expecting more people to give me a written response. In my explanation as to what I was doing, I told people that I would post what they had written back, unless they told me not to. But I did say that there was no pressure on their behalf, to respond. My Dad was the first to give a response and I was blown away. I hadn’t known about anything that he wrote. It seemed almost like an admission. My sister, Heather, told me that when she read it, she started to cry because she hadn’t known anything. That single response was worth the entire project. Then, when I came back from vacation, I had another letter waiting for me. It was from Ashley, Corey’s long-term girlfriend. It was a beautiful thank you.
Thank you to everybody that told me that you enjoyed reading the letters. Even Leigha told me that there were things that she learned about me by reading them. It is one of those things where you find yourself talking about things or stories that you hadn’t thought about for a long time. Before the month had started, I though that this project would give me a month-long break from the blog that I had been struggling to post once a week at times. I found that although I had written roughly half of the letters before the month had started, it became a bit of a scramble at the end to try to get the letters to the people before I had posted them. I also found myself really excited to get back to writing new posts and scratching things off my list. While it wasn’t a month-long break like I had anticipated, it did rejuvenate my excitement for ADAM DOES iT.
What did you think about the 30 Days Of Thanks? Did you read all of them, or only the people that you know? What was the most interesting thing that you learned about me through this? Would you ever consider participating in 30 Days Of Thanks, yourself? In case you missed any of them, here is a complete list of the letters:
Would i give 30 days of thanks ago? maybe. but inspired by your posts i'm going to be completing my 3 days of thanks. i'm on day 2!
ReplyDeleteOne good thing about formally thanking those that you live with is that you don't have to pay postage.
ReplyDelete