If I post it... they will come...

I apologize for the layoff on posting, but I just couldn't come up with anything worth saying. Although that condition still exists, I have decided that the maximum interval between posts has been reached and a new post is necessary.

This weekend I decided that my pile of unopened mail had risen to a point of collapse and had to be dealt with. I tend to get the mail from the mailbox about twice a week. I'm not sure if it's the walk down there that bothers me, or the knowledge that anything delivered via the mail is going to be bad news. I usually find only one or two items that are not addressed to "or current resident", and depending on my level of motivation I may pull out the ones actually addressed to me. More often than not I just put the little pile of folded over coupons and grocery adds that shelter my mail on the counter and ignore them.

Through scientific method, I have determined that the cloak of invisibility for a stack of mail has a life of about two weeks. My study has yet to determine if the cloaking diminishes due to the effects of outside forces, such as creditors who demand payment, or the cloaks inability to sustain itself as the mass of mail overpowers its cloaking mechanism. Either way, the result of my as yet unpublished study, indicates that two weeks is the maximum sustained unopened time period for cloaked mail.

Thanks to the devious marketing techniques of mass mailing companies, it is nearly impossible to determine what mail needs to be opened and what could simply be chucked into the trash. I tend to open everything that has my name on it to ensure that no personally identifiable information lurks within. So that means that with the exception of the grocery circulars, I pretty much open everything. As soon as I recognize the mail is trying to sell me a mortgage or enroll me into some kind of protection scheme I hastily shred it into a thousand tiny pieces.

That brings me to the only truly enjoyable part of mail processing at Nabor Dan's... the shredding. I know it must seem somewhat juvenile, but the process of using a power shredder is cathartic. Watching the mail turn from informative targeted direct mail pieces, into tiny unidentifiable shreds is somehow uplifting. I can only think of shredding as the completion of the mail circle of life. I'm sure it goes something like this; idea, creative, printing, processing, mail handling, delivery, review, revulsion, shredding. I'm glad to do my part in helping every piece of mail achieve it's destiny. I think I need to start looking at industrial shredders.

- ND