A Letter For: The Introduction

The project and my intentions for it

This is a (mostly) selfish project, driven and originating by my own inability to communicate the things I want to say to people, especially the people I love and admire. I want to express the full magnitude of my gratitude but finding a way to deliver that is hard for me.

I often find myself saying those things to myself, in my inner monologue, but unable to speak them outloud to the desired person. That inner monologue has great intentions but I often lack the courage or ability to get those thoughts out.  I blame timing, or the environment, or whatever else fits in my excuse file cabinet but ultimately the words never come out and I’m left stuck with them. 

I categorize this project as “selfish” because it feels to me to be self serving, with great intentions. The core of it is to improve myself. I want to be better at the way I communicate, better at how thoughtful I can be and I want to document the important inputs into my mind that have come from others (their outputs). I feel so blessed to be human and participate in our ability to create and share from each other. It truly is humanity’s’ greatest gift.

However, my intentions for these public letters are selfless - I want to highlight all the good things other people have brought to my life and my human experience and promote them to other people. In this way, the project finds a balance that I hope will resonate.

And as with all things, finding balance is the key.

Here is how it all started:

I woke up one Saturday morning in August (2023) and went out with my family garage sale-ing (a common weekend activity for us). We stumbled on an ad that said something along the lines of:

“Garage Sale with Vegan Breakfast Burritos and Coffee, even if you don’t buy anything, come hang with us, we’re fun!”

We were in… hook, line and sinker.

Once at this garage sale we got to talking with the purveyors of said sale and the young man, Aristotle, a writer and PhD student in literature, mentioned that a hobby of his was fixing up and selling vintage mechanical typewriters. Not just that, he has written and is writing full novels solely on typewriters. He lured me in by dropping a juicy detail - he just finished refurbishing a rare typewriter that has a script font.

I could not resist, we headed straight for his basement to look at it. When he popped that typewriter out of its case, set it on his desk, and and typed out a sample and handed it to me, I about fainted. It was stunningly beautiful. I told him on the spot “I’m buying this from you, tell me how much”. $450 was venmo’d immediately.

After buying my typewriter, I found that it was easier to get words out through the machine. The ink ribbon, the metal letters hammering the paper to the platten as an extension of my fingers slamming the keys, the beautiful impressions made on beautiful linen paper – it was a medium that worked for me.  

So what if I’m a coward and can’t say the things I want to aloud, this machine can help me communicate them  (me after typing my first letter)

My Grandma Nancy had a unique disposition to have absolutely no filter and say whatever is on her mind to whoever she was speaking to. Somehow that did not pass on to me.  So I’m left here at age 37 to try and figure that out, work on it, progress, and hopefully find a middle ground that serves me better (if I went ALL the way GMa Nancy the world would be in trouble).

Grandma Nancy, the effortlessly beautiful matriarch of our family who never shied from speaking her mind

So what IS this project? 

Once I brought my typewriter home and started playing around with it I was hooked.  Especially so once I sat down and wrote my first letter correspondence.  It was cathartic. I have a propensity for nice and beautiful things. They bring me joy and energy. Seeing a beautiful script type on fancy linen paper, folding it up in a nice envelope and sending it really hit my sweet spot.

My first letter was to a loved one for their birthday. It felt great to say things to them that I wouldn’t have normally and in such a beautiful format.

My second letter was were I really got hooked. It was to someone I didn’t know well but had admired from down the street. A 16 year old almost-man that reminded me of me, a basketball player with immense talent, a 6’8” wiry frame, and from an awesome family. I went to a game of his against our cross-town rival (they won in overtime) where he got the short of the stick with some bad officiating and tough love from his coach.

I felt compelled to write him and pass along some advice and perspective from when I went through similar trials as a high school hooper.

After I wrote and delivered it (and received amazing feedback from him and his parents) my dopamine spiked off the charts.  This is when I realized I needed to do this regularly, it had to become a routine part of my life. 

So, I did what I do best: 

Head first deep dive.  Obsessive. All the way down the rabbit hole. 

I started watching and consuming content on how to write letters and proper correspondence. I watched a documentary on typewriters. I bought every imaginable form of vintage luxury linen paper from eBay I could find.  I started writing notes and thoughts and ideas down about writing letters, designing a creative process for producing them, creating a problem set to solve, branding, anything and everything that came to my mind got documented, studied, and contemplated on.

Now we are here.  15 months later.  I’m finally ready to share it to the world and get it out there. 

In many ways it feels like the MOST important work I’ve ever done. 

In fact it’s already led me to other things that have enriched my life and work to the nth degree, before I’ve even published a single post. I’ve realized that practicing communicating is a meta-skill, like fitness, and that the more you practice it you actually enrich many other aspects of your life.

I like to think of things as inputs and outputs. 

The inputs for this project are simple, it’s the energy, knowledge, creativity and love that other humans output into the world for me to experience, consume and grow from. I get to curate my own museum of the inputs that I like and resonate with.  

The outputs are this:

1. A post here on my Substack, everyday at 3:30pm, that is an outpouring of my gratitude for their work and how it’s shaped me. My goal is for this to also introduce my readers to these people and their amazing work, spread the goodness around, and participate in the exercise that propels humanity forward: sharing knowledge and creativity

2. A Hand-typed letter, sealed in a beautiful envelope and package, and delivered to the person (as best as I can attempt). These letters are private and contain my truest communications to that person. If you receive one of these letters please respect my wishes to keep it private, but also please don’t hesitate to reach out to me or send a letter back to start a conversation.

My other hope or intention is that by doing this and making it public it spreads.  I want it to be contagious. I want to provide the motivation or inspiration for others who struggle with what I struggle with to say what they want to say however they can say it or write it or express it.  I don’t know if it will work, but it feels like the right thing to do and I’m compelled to do it and keep doing it.  

For me it has turned into a therapy. A release. One that is freeing me by the day and opening up my soul. 

I hope you’ll enjoy following along and if you think it’s good, spread it along to whomever you think it would resonate with.  I’ll continue this no matter what the results (although you should know that my ego will enjoy it’s success because that means I will have created an upward spiral of goodness).