Though it’s apparently been around for years, I just recently learned about the USPS’s Informed Delivery service, which sends a daily email digest of your soon-to-arrive postal mail – scans of the front of letters that will be showing up later that day in your mailbox, and tracking updates and delivery timing for packages coming in the next few days. It’s a free service, and though I was dubious as to whether it would work, in fact, it totally does.

If you live in a house, Informed Delivery might be genuinely useful; from the dashboard, you can schedule deliveries for specific times, leave delivery instructions (“put it on the back porch”), and the like. But here in my NYC apartment, with a doorman able to accept and safeguard packages at any point, it don’t much help me out. Indeed, in my own life, I can’t really make a functional case for the service at all. And, at the same time, it makes me genuinely happy. There’s just something delightful about opening my mailbox, already knowing what’s going to be inside.

I know that’s a bit dumb. But, in these crazy times, perhaps I’m just happy for anything that makes me feel some small amount of power and control in the world. It may be a small win, but in this environment, I’ll take any win I can get.