Ever get that? The complete and total absence of reason and inspiration when you are dealing with greeting cards? Especially around xmas/nye, when it seems like every greeting card you ever forgot starts stalking you and asking you to be filled out (weird sentence…bare with me…no food today yet).
Anyway, what to write? It`s like a curse (at least for me). You don`t wanna be too boring and use the phrases you used a thousand times. You don`t wanna be too creative cause then people might not get what the hell was it you were trying to say and you might need to send an extra card to explain card number one. So the secret is in balance. But still…imagine you have to write ten cards and those people know each other so they might exhange the words you wrote to them (I know for a fact that my grandmothers call each other every year and read their cards to each other. One year, we accidently wrote the same thing to both of them…and all hell broke loose). So one good card does not do the trick. You must be good ten fucking times. I swear, never have I felt more exhausted than after writing those ten cards. Usually I cheat, and use the cards they sent last year, copying off the words and rhymes. Maybe I should just use the whole cards… no …wait…signatures. Damn. Anyway, that usually does the trick since everybody is either too old or have a really bad memory for cards (whoa…bad memory for cards…does anybody have a GOOD memory for cards? For the sake of that person`s mental health, I hope not). But still, copying other people cards is not a general solution. You cannot use it every year cause people would notice.
The extreme options are always available. You could write “blah blah blah (insert the current year-date here) blah blah blah”. Minimalistic, up-to-date and fast. But still…it is missing something. I can`t put my finger on it but it just is not…it.
Another extreme option would be to just sign your name on an empty card or not even that. Sending blanks around would be a nice touch of that special feeling we call xmas. People would probably thing you are trying to assasinate them. Fun shit.
Option of “Echo” comes to mind as well. You could simply copy off the thing a person wrote to you last year and then send it to the same person this year. I mean, what`s that person gonna do? Be offended?
What I will most certainly not do is write “Merry xmas and a happy nye”. That`s absolutely out of the question. That line is even more horrible than “I wish you all the best”. God. Mind killer to the max.
Another thing…print-outs or long hand? I go for long-hand every time. Printing your cards is like telling everybody you don`t really care about them…you`re doing it cause you have to. Printing cards and at the same time writing the same thing to everybody (cause then you only have to push “print” once!) is pathetic and in a way sick.
Anyway, as you can see, this card writing business is serious. And most of the people don`t even realise it just how much work and time and energy does it take to do it. I should add a note to every card indicating how much minutes did it take me to write it. But then again…that might look a bit stupid.
