After making a few minor changes to the design, using my journal for some time, and sharing it with others my perspective on this project changed. I sent out the email I attached above to over 20 of my friends. Within minutes, I began receiving emails back with things that stated, “LIZA, I LOVE THIS SM!!! So up my alley! Thanks for sharing, it puts a smile on my face” or “This is so cute!!!! I’m printing it out rn :)” and “OMG THIS IS SO CUTE !! I love you! I’m forwarding it to my mom”. I saw that the prototype I created, while functional and purposeful, was not actually the most meaningful part of this project. After seeing the responses of others it made me want to send it to more of my friends to hopefully brighten more peoples days. I think so often we get stuck to patterns. We tell ourselves that emails are formal and text messages are casual when in actuality who doesn’t love to get a fun email. Or we tell ourselves that people are busy and won’t be interested. At the end of the day, we all need a few extra smiles during this time and people are interested. So many families are hurting so much and in so many ways we aren’t in control of fixing that. This showed me that while what I might be in control of, sending an email out, might be small it can help those out. If we all take control of little things that can brighten peoples days hopefully we can make these next few months just a little better. Since this realization I made a family tree for each side of my family to give to my grandparents. It was nothing crazy but it was relaxing to get my fine point markers back out and do something fun and I also knew they would be excited to get something in their mailbox from a grandchild. While I will continue to use my journal and hope some of my friends do too, I hope I continue to search for other small gestures that might bring a smile to the faces of the people I care so much about.
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