We shipped out half of the Body Politic orders today. The process made me think about how our shipping events have changed over the years. We used to haul everything down to Dragon’s Keep and throw the doors wide for as many volunteers as wanted to come. Sometimes we had as many as 25 people working simultaneously. It was high intensity and the work got done fast. Sometimes in half a day. These days the shipping is spread out over several days. We run it from our home and usually only have four or five volunteers at a time. Some of those changes are driven by the changes in postal regulations and my postage printing software. All packages have dates on them and so we can’t print all the postage a week in advance the way that I used to do. Some of it is that I now have a group of volunteers who’ve been coming to help for years. I don’t have to explain very much any more. They know how this works and that makes a big difference. Shipping from home was not possible when the kids were younger because they would have been constantly distracting me. Now they help out too. I wonder what shipping will look like in another six years. All I can be certain of is that it will be different than it is now.
And that is about all the thinking I can manage on a shipping day. My brain is tired.