old style mail

One of the chores I'd been putting off for too long during the end of semester chaos was sorting through the pile of postal mail. I've known a number of people who've had phobias about receiving, opening, or sending mail -- and I don't believe I'm in that category. And I didn't use to procrastinate about the mail. But over the past year or two I've become someone who just lets the mail sit for a few days (or weeks) before opening it. I do all of our bills online, so we don't receive any statements in the mail. I very rarely get any personal mail -- and if I do, my gf will alert me (since she's usually the one bringing it in). So going through the stack (sorting into keep, recycle, & shred) is just plain tedious. It falls into the following categories: (1) credit card offers; (2) notices from my current cards trying to get me to join this or that program, or do balance transfers; (3) requests for donations from schools I've attended and political organizations; (4) a couple of catalogs; (5) account statement from my bank; (6) maybe 1 or 2 other things that are actually worth paying attention to.

If someone actually did send me something important, chances are I might not see it for quite some time. Which is Not Good in the larger organizational scheme of things. But the crappiness of the postal mail I receive only encourages me to be so slack.

Long gone are the days when getting mail was exciting. And when I used postal mail for communicating with my friends. I miss the aesthetics of writing letters (the decorated envelopes my friend V would make, the fun of choosing new writing paper) but I just don't have the time. And if anyone else's mail habits are like mine, a real letter might just get buried under 200 solicitations from Discover card. . .