I hate the mail. Nothing good ever comes in a letter. I barely ever check my mail because of ADHD, and when I check it it’s bad news.

Over half of it is ads. Ads printed on paper and plastic with synthetic glues and delivered in a petrol vehicle. Ads I immediately throw in my bin, filling up its plastic bag and contributing to the garbage truck’s load. We just collectively filled the earth with more microplastics that will give us all brain damage, and burned carbon to hurt poor people in coastal and desert areas, so that I could ignore you.

Of the remainder, mail that is actually addressed to somebody, over half of it is addressed to previous residents who I don’t know. More carbon use, more plastic waste, more human time spent doing nothing productive. And now I get to either feel guilty for throwing it away, or go to the post office to return it. So this is almost worse than the ads, someone sent me a chore.

And then of the mail specifically addressed to me, most of it is still ads! Local politicians shouting into the void and hoping I’ll listen. And again, the carbon, plastic, and waste of human potential.

Finally, we come to the stuff that I actually need to pay attention to and isn’t a total waste of a letter… and it’s bills. Bills that I don’t know how to pay, because I’m not 60. So now I have to go learn how to pay a paper bill for some reason. More chores.

Parcels, I like. Parcels are useful. But letters? It all seems like a huge scam to me. We are wasting so much effort and destroying the environment in order to annoy me and give me more work to do. This is why I’m never eager to check the mail. It’s like voluntarily turning off my adblock. I would never do it under normal circumstances. It feels like a big nasty trick someone’s playing on me.