350 Letters | Month Two Recap and Lessons Learned

350 letters is a year-long project. Read my month one recap + some of the project's inspiration.

Two months down, ten to go. And I'm behind. I'm trying not to sweat it - to learn from the February slump (what is up with February?!), but I'm a little concerned that I didn't find the time to prioritize writing thirty letters in February. This is a big, long-ish term project. It requires planning and perseverance. I'm attempting to stay on track by writing 30 letters every month, and in February I only wrote twenty-three. I learned a few lessons by not meeting my goal that I'll take with me into March, so I'm sharing those today.

lesson one / buy what you need

Whatever the project happens to be, if you have what you need in the house, it's a lot easier to get a project done. I had things like stamps at the ready, but I found there were categories of cards that I didn't necessarily have (sympathy, congrats). I'm remedying that this month by making some of my own so I'll have them on hand. I knew this was an issue in January, but I didn't do anything about it last month and I came up short. Not a coincidence.

lesson two / gather supplies in one place

When I have a few minutes to myself, I want to be able to sit down and get to work immediately, which requires me having my things in one place. A few weeks ago, I organized some random paperwork in my office into simple boxes.

Stationery gets one box, so now it's easy to find what I need and if I get a new card I know exactly where it belongs. I didn't have my return address stamp or postage or a pen in this box, so I found myself spending a few minutes tracking them down every time I wrote a letter. I'm fixing that this week - all my supplies will be in one place moving forward.

lesson three / bulk isn't always best

I wrote a bunch of Galentine's letters last month, which was great. I loved designing and putting them together, and that knocked out a big chunk of my number for the month. But after I mailed them I kind of dropped off the map and forgot about what remained for the month. I'd like to be better about writing letters throughout the month, rather than focusing all my energy on the process one week out of the month. I think that might burn me out and defeat the purpose of the project, which is to help me make a habit of thinking about others.

lesson four / always keep a stash of generic supplies

One of my favorite things to use for Project Life is plain white 3x4 cards - I use them all the time. For stationery, I've found I use generic cards to just send a "hello" or "thinking of you" note. I don't need a $5 greeting card to do that, just some simple cards that don't convey a specific message. I've loved using these but I'm running low. Not sure whether I'll design something myself or buy something new, but I know I'll use whatever I end up getting.

March feels like a month full of promise and change. I hope that thirty days from now I'll be able to report that I'm back in the habit and back on track with the letter-writing campaign! Be sure to follow along on Instagram (@catsaunders) and let me know if you have any lessons learned from getting behind on projects or goals.