Tag Archives: letters

Day 100: Dr. Wareham

I made it to Day 100!

I wanted to find someone special to send my letter to today – and I found someone! Meet Dr. Wareham: a centenarian from Loma Linda, CA who up to five years ago was still working. And while he retired as a cardiothoracic surgeon at 74, he continued working and teaching until five years ago.

Check out this report from Dr. Sanjay Gupta – his story promises to inspire you!

Here’s to 265 more handwritten letters and long lives for all of us.

Day 100

Dear Dr. Wareham,

I hope my letter finds you and Mrs. Wareham doing well. Your story featured by Dr. Sanjay Gupta inspired me to write you a letter. I have a commitment to write a handwritten letter every day for a year and today is day 100. As I celebrate 100 handwritten letters this year I can’t think of anyone else better to share this moment with than someone who is 100 and is living life to the fullest. 

I've been embossing the letter numbers on some of the envelopes.

I’ve been embossing the letter numbers on some of the envelopes.

Your story was particularly moving for me because of your lifelong work as a cardiothoracic surgeon. My mother suffered three heart attacks, the first of which she had at the age of 40. She died in 2006 at the age of 63. I’m 41 now and know that this family history doesn’t bode well for me and my risk of developing coronary artery disease is considerably higher.

Your blood cholesterol of 117 is phenomenal and encourages me to continue working at improving my health. You’ve inspired me to reduce my meat consumption even further – maybe even eliminate it all together.

If you have any specific advice for me or suggestions of resources to help me improve my health, I’d love to hear from you. 

With deep admiration and respect,
Reed Sandridge

Day 99: Jami

Life is funny, isn’t it. For some reason I decided to write John Wilson yesterday. I had no idea that today was his wife’s birthday, but when I saw that this morning I knew I needed to drop her a letter today. After all, John gets plenty of attention, now it’s time to focus on Jami!

Day 99- Jami

Jami

Happy birthday Jami,

Day 99- Jami-2I woke up this morning and saw that it was your birthday and thought, today is Jami’s day. I thought it was incredibly coincidental that I decided to write John yesterday and then find out today was your birthday. It was meant to be. I miss you and Parker – OK, I miss John too. I enjoyed very much visiting with you when I was there in in 2012. I hope that we can all get together soon.

Have a great birthday.
Reed

P.S. I love the “attic lounge” – that space looks totally different!  

Day 90: Brian Chesky, Airbnb

airbnbHappy April Fools Day! Be careful out there today.

Some companies have completely changed their industry. They disrupt the status quo and wreak havoc on traditional businesses in their industry. Companies like Apple, Uber, Coursera and Airbnb all have redefined how we think about the products and services they offer.

Today I’m writing Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky who, along with his co-founder Joe Gebbia, created Airbnb – a website that allows travelers to rent private residences. It’s brilliant and I’ve used it a couple times with excellent results. It competes with the traditional hotel model in a way that changes how we look at lodging.

I just finished reading my friend Amy Wilkinson’s first book, The Creator’s Code. It’s the culmination of five years of research and over 200 interviews to figure out what the secret sauce is that successful entrepreneurs possess. Airbnb is one of her case studies. She tells about how Chesky and Gebbia “found the gap” – in other words, they found an unmet need in the travel world and fulfilled it.

The book is full of inspiring stories (shameless plug) and I became very interested in how creative the Airbnb guys were. I started researching them and discovered that they had a campaign called One Less Stranger where they gave 100,000 people in the Airbnb community $10 each so that they could do something creative with it to make the world smaller, “one less stranger at a time”. Well, I couldn’t help but see the similarity to my Year of Giving.

 

So I decided to drop Brian a note. He and Gebbia were creative and took calculated risks in creating Airbnb – who knows, they might just consider my idea…or appoint me the One Less Stranger campaign ambassador!

Day 90

 

Dear Brian,

Congratulations on the #OneLessStranger campaign – I’m a big fan. I feel like I might have even somehow been part of the inspiration for the it. You see five years ago I gave away $10 every day to a stranger while I was unemployed – I called it the YearOfGiving. It was amazing, and I created an entirely new community – so you’re right, it definitely is a way to bring us closer together as a society.

Day 90-2This idea of doing something every day for a year has kinda taken over my life. This year I have embarked on a journey called the YearOfLetters where I write a handwritten letter to someone every day for a year. You’re day 90!

We should talk about next year – I’ve made a commitment to sleep in a different place every night for a year. We could call it YearOfAirbnb. I’ve also thought of doing a YearOfCouchSurfing but that sounds way less comfortable – and I guess it would make more sense to partner with that other company if I went that route. Anyway, what do you think?

Your fan and customer,
Reed

Day 89: Rachel

Sometimes all the planets are aligned and weird things happen – like March 14th (3.14.15) of this year being “Pi Day.” Today is no exception. I should check if there is a full moon.

Day 89-2

My “homemade” embossed card.

 

Happy birthday Rachel!

Day 89I think that it is only appropriate that someone born in ’89 receives my 89th handwritten letter on the 89th day of 2015 and drinks 89 shots of whiskey. I’m kidding about the whiskey – stick with beer.

Cheers,
Reed

P.S. I just learned you’re actually the middle sister – who knew? I always thought you were the oldest.

Sunday Notes & Letters for Week 14

Photo: sineadgleeson.com

Photo: sineadgleeson.com

I got a few letters back this week. The first one was a response to my letter on Day 65 to House of Cards creator Beau Willimon. I use the word response pretty liberally. I actually heard from Netflix. It was a form letter thanking me for being such a huge fan of Netflix – which isn’t exactly true, I’m fairly indifferent to Netflix. My letter was to Mr. Willimon and had no reference to me being a fan of their service. I’m sure Mr. Willimon will be writing back shortly – after all I did tweet at him.

Another letter was from my Aunt Kay who I wrote to on Day 52. She thanked me for my letter to her and let me know that she would probably be back in DC in the next couple of weeks. That’s great – I always enjoy spending time with her.

Finally I got a letter from my friend Aimee from Day 5 thanking me for my handwritten letter and absurdly late wedding gift. You may recall that I couldn’t remember whether or not I had sent them a gift or not for their 2013 wedding! Yep, I was really late…more than Emily Post’s “you’ve got a year” advice.

So all in all it was a good week. Well, with the exception of an irritating email from Google Adsense that informed me that they were terminating my agreement with them due to a violation of their terms and guidelines and that I was banned for life. Furthermore, they reneged on their promise to pay me for allowing companies to advertise on my blog. It’s not a ton of money – trust me I’m not quitting my day job – but it would have helped offset the cost of postage, stationery, etc. They won’t even tell me how I violated their terms and guidelines – that’s the most annoying part. In response to my appeal, they just offered some snooze-inducing stock language that says they’d love to tell me why they’ve taken this action against me BUT….they can’t:

We understand that you may want more information about your account activity, however, in order to protect our proprietary detection systems, we are unable to provide further details. Thank you for understanding.

Well, thanks for nothing Google. And shame on you. I expected more from a company who touts the phrase “Don’t Be Evil” as their motto and states their mission as, “facilitating access to information for the entire world” – well, unless of course that information is about Google themselves.  I will be looking for other advertising ideas to help offset the costs of the website. If you have any suggestions of reputable, honest (i.e. won’t keep my money!) marketing partners – drop me a note.