Hi Reader 👋 -

Happy Thursday. I've been fighting a bad cold for a week now and pounding the OTC meds. My family spent so much time in isolation during the pandemic that getting sick feels weird.

I hope you are staying healthy. If you have any tips for kicking a cold, I'd love to hear them (because I feel like I've tried everything at this point, lol).

1) Reflection:

I love the holidays. My house looks like a Pottery Barn catalog threw up in it after I've decorated for Christmas. That ritual always occurs the day after American Thanksgiving (even if I don't feel well). I put my family in charge of decorating the trees — yes, plural — and I tell them to otherwise stay out of my way.

But I also recognize that the holidays are hard for many people. They have been hard for me in past years as well. Grief, stress, family issues, depression... so many things can creep in and are very valid reasons to dread the season.

Be gentle with yourself.

2) Product:

If you're like me, you probably have contacts alllll over the place. Your phone. Your multitude of Google accounts. Your social accounts. A few years ago, I tried to consolidate all of my contacts into a single Google account (using an export/import) but it wasn't a great solution since new contacts were added to my other accounts constantly.

I've used customer relationship management tools (CRM) at various jobs, but I needed one for myself. One that could consolidate my contacts and help me maintain my network.

Turns out, personal CRMs exist! I've tried both Dex and Clay. They're very similar. Dex has the ability to link contacts (like spouses) as related, which I like. But Clay has Zapier integration and I'm a Zapier fangirl.

If you want One App to Rule Them All for your contacts, check these two out.

3) Tip:

I'm a person who still sends Christmas cards in the mail every year. Yep. I usually create an assembly line with my kids: I address them, some else inserts the card, someone else adds a stamp, someone else uses the little sponge thing that adds water so you don't have to lick the envelope. It's an entire production.

But years ago I crossed the threshold of too many Christmas cards. My list kept growing.

So I created an email list in Mailchimp (free!) and I send out an eCard. In the eCard I also include a recap of our year's highlights. I have to update the list each year with new people, but that doesn't take too much time. Highly recommend this alternative to an ever-growing Christmas card list.

Want to read more stuff?

• ​How to Talk About Stress, Trauma, and Loss | Option B
• ​The Value of Owning More Books Than You Can Read | Big Think
• ​Writers Should Prepare for the Downfall of Twitter | Me, Medium

That's it for this issue of Tinkering! See you again in two weeks.

Cheers,

Anna Burgess Yang

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