Sending Things to Strangers on the Internet

Last week I came across a post on Facebook that was sort of like a chain message, only instead of demanding I share the totally true and entirely not fake story of Sally the little orphan girl with no eyeballs who will come into my room and turn my face into spiders and also burn my house down if I don't forward it on to at least ten people before midnight, it was a chain message about sharing books with people.

Unlike Sally's face-spider/arson letter, I liked the premise of this thing and decided it would be a nice way to spread some positivity in the world. I do not negotiate with haunted orphan terrorists, but I'm totally down with promoting literacy.

About a month ago I discovered the website of one Jenny Lawson, aka The Bloggess, a writer about seven billion times funnier and better at writing than I will ever hope to be. Reading The Bloggess' site has served as a big motivator for me to start devoting more time to creating for AiH: a task which I was surprised to find did wonders for my overall well-being . Apparently if I'm not creating anything, eventually too much clutter builds up in my head and I get super unhappy. It seems drawing dumb cartoons and writing poo jokes remedies that enough that I don't relapse into an uncontrolled World of Warcraft binge where I gain ten pounds and hate myself.

Back in February, Mrs. Lawson posted something called Booksgiving on her site. That post is here. The premise of that event, which I gather was extremely successful, was very similar to the premise of the non-orphan-murderer chain mail I screenshotted above; a bunch of strangers on the internet gift books to one another because it's a nice thing to do and we could all benefit from a little random kindness once in a while. 

I decided that having missed Booksgiving due to not being aware of it, participating in this book share chain mail would be a good way to pay homage to someone who had inspired me, while simultaneously doing something nice. 

I went out and purchased two copies of Furriously Happy by Jenny Lawson. One to send to whatever stranger I got linked up with and the other to read myself.

Please disregard the disembodied dog head, Griff has a thing where he must be in any photograph being taken in his vicinity. You pretty much can't snap a photo of something in my house without his dumb head stuck somewhere in the frame.

I got assigned someone in London to send my book to, which is pretty cool. I don't think I've ever had to mail anything internationally before. 

Off my book goes, along with a little note I wrote and this drawing of a bunch of dinosaurs having tea because apparently that is what I think of England.

I'm not gonna bother with what I wrote in the note, but basically I just explained why they were getting a random package and that I hope they liked the book, or the consolation dino tea party if not. Also I may have gotten off on a tangent at one point where I said mean things about Topeka Kansas for some reason.

Maybe this will be the beginning of an awesome old timey pen-pal relationship where we will send each other letters and junk in the mail. I've always wanted a pen-pal. Or maybe my weird book and dumb dino-drawing will make them think I'm a huge loser. One of the two for sure.