Greeting cards, insecurity

There’s a poet in Denver, Mathias Svalina, who runs a Dream Delivery Service: all day he composes little dream poems, and then at night he rides around the city on his bike delivering them to subscribers. I signed up some years ago and was 100% delighted. Every day I got a little pink envelope with a poem written just for me. (Each individual subscriber gets their own daily poem; everyone gets the same poem on Sundays.) I think it cost about $45 for the month.

Here’s the setup for one dream:

You are walking around the city at night & see a small cocktail bar that looks inviting. You step inside & the whole place is filled with people you don’t want to see, disliked coworkers, exes, that weird dude who used to follow you around. They are all here.

He’s really good, for real. Go check him out.

Anyway, he mid-August to mid-September corridor is a birthday-heavy month for me, in that I have two children and a nephew celebrating. My two late-summer birthday children also happen to be my most guinea pig-loving children, so Sunbun, our crabbiest guinea pig, features prominently.

I’ve been thinking about the Dream Delivery Service and how fun and charming it was to engage with some personalized yet affordable art, and I wonder if you feel the same way. Do you like bespoke watercolored greeting cards? Do you want one? Is this a dumb idea? Do you ever think about what colors bugs can see with their compound eyes? Do you have a favorite burner on your stove? Is it the left front one?

I’m not really sure how it would work. Maybe you’d call me up. “Hey, Jef, pal buddy friend, I need a Veteran’s Day greeting card and it has to contain a picture of my mother in steampunk gear watering a hens & chicks plant with a turkey baster.” Or maybe it’s less specific. Maybe you have no idea and you need help brainstorming. Maybe we’d come up with an idea and I’d draft up a sketch and, if you felt on board, paint it up and send it to you.

If that sounds fun and interesting, maybe drop me a line. If it sounds scary and confusing, I’d like you to journal about it and then share those journal entries with Tif, who has a master’s degree in literature.

What do you think? I feel insecure. I feel like I’ve made it awkward now. Have I made it awkward?