Mail is a funny thing. Just the idea you can send anything to anyone in the world and it can get there in a decent amount of time baffles me. With us living in the digital age, now people who send mail can check on the status of their package. They are alerted to when a package leaves the sorting facility and is out for delivery. The mindset of getting our package in 1-2 days is so ingrained into our skulls that any slight delay causes us to go into a frenzy. I can be lumped into that category because my mail orders for the last month have baffled me in just how slow it takes to get our mail.

I obviously have Amazon Prime. Every year the platform promotes their student discount rate thing so my last year was the target demographic as I entered my freshman year of college. Over the last year, I have used Amazon Prime for a number of things. I don't purchase everything from there, only things I know I need right away. For example, I needed some props for my Halloween costume last year and in no time they were sent. Those two days feel like forever funny enough so I try to find things to distract me from the mail. These things usually fail thanks to our handy dandy tracking equipment for packages. Let alone the text alerts we get on our phones every time a package enters the mailroom. Yes, those poor people back in the day who had no way of knowing when their package would arrive. Patiently waiting next to the mailbox for the mailman to drop it off. Yes, I thought those days were long behind us. It looks like some things never change even with text notifications.

This summer some of my favorite YouTubers finally launched some new merch. I am not a big merch buyer however, I felt that I should dabble a little bit in these items to help support my favorite content creators. The first thing I purchased was a custom water bottle. Now this YouTuber named "Bazza Gazza" is an Australian, meaning his merch store was in Australia… obviously. The bottle alone was a flat rate of $20. And I've been craving this water bottle for a little bit over a year now. Because these stores are only up for a limited amount of time. So I knew this was my only chance to get the bottle. Which meant I had to spend an extra $17 on shipping. For weeks I waited and waited for my bottle to ship. At one point I thought it got lost in the mail. Even with the text notifications it still listed the item in Sydney, "ready to be shipped." And I work in the hot sun all summer too so there was a necessity to have a bottle of water. Eventually, on my last week of camp, the bottle came and it's one of my favorite things I own right now. The shipping of the product took forever but I could tell where the bottle was going. But this other package I just got today, oh boy…

So I understand that there a few facilities like FedEx or UPS that has processing plants across the country. I just watched an interesting video about our overnight mail being shipped. So I was tracking this package from "BasicallyIDoWrk". A couple of t-shirts nothing major. This shipment flew from Florida to Ohio (Perrysburg) to Michigan…. Like, Hold up. Why Michigan. At this point, the package was backtracking when it could've been shipped to Cleveland from Perrysburg. The expected delivery date went from this Thursday to next Tuesday. I was flipping out. Thankfully someone in Michigan realized the mistake and shipped it back and I just got it today.

Maybe as a society, we are spoiled with our mail. Or maybe this is the future. One thing is for sure, I am enjoying my t-shirt and water bottle.