Mailbox zen for beginners

Why I never check my mailbox on Saturday.

The humble mailbox at the house, down the driveway, at the nearest intersection, is a gateway to the world. It is the physical location where many things and events enter our private world and generate the whole gamut of feelings from effervescent joy to dark anger.

The Christmas cards, birthday greetings, letters bearing bad family news, demands for money, even death and destruction, the mailbox silently accepts them.

It took the blogster a decade or so to drop one of the traditional mailbox routines: check the mailbox every day Monday through Saturday.

No more Saturday mailbox checks for the blogster.

Saturday mail, like the rest of the week's, can be good news or bad news, or junk mail. Forget the junk mail. Good news are cool, now what about bad news?

To a person with a deep sense of doing the right thing and fixing problems as soon as they pop up, bad news mail on Saturday can be a health hazard. And I am not talking about the Unabomber's letter bombs at all.

Take an incorrect payment demand with a penalty for example.

You find it in the mailbox on Saturday morning and read it, unaware of what's in store.

Contact phone numbers and an email address are good for exactly one thing on a Saturday and on Sunday: nothing.

If you receive a government nastygram on Saturday, you know full well nobody is there to take your call, to fix the problem or to insult you for daring to call them at work.

If it is from a company, even one that has stores open 24/7, you would do well to remember that accountants generally do not work on the weekend either.

So, ignore the mailbox on Saturday, and over time you will feel wonderful, really.

The blogster is well aware that the trend goes in exactly the opposite direction, at least in the U.S., with Amazon gunning for Sunday delivery of stuff.

Me, I will continue to practice mailbox zen on Saturday.

[Update 8/23/2017] There is such a thing as mail phobia, ZEIT ONLINE says in an article today. It describes a perfectly normal person hiding her mail, wishing it would go away.