There’s a person on the internet named Taylor. They write all sorts of blog posts on different topics that are interesting but the one that has stood out to me is a post titled “Make a /wish page!”
Around mid-2024, I did just that. If you navigate over to the /wish page on this website, you won’t actually find anything. The reason for that is that I also decided to create a separate website (in a Linktree-styled format) at around the same time specifically to share with others some things that might be useful when they first get to know me. I won’t link it here because I’ve been using it on a need-to-know basis and I don’t think I’m ready to break that just yet. It’s not awfully hard to find either. If you have me on Signal, you’ll actually see the link to it in my “About” field which I’ve found is a great way to share it. (I’ve had a few Signal contacts mention that they visited it and comment on my short writings over there but I digress.)
Getting back onto the main point, one of the few pages I have is indeed a /wish page and I’m happy to report that it’s worked out well for me and I now advocate for everyone to do something similar. On my own /wish page, I have two main sections; the first talks about how I feel about gifting and to what extent I partificipate in it myself and what kinds of items I will gift myself or appreciate, and the second lists many items in different categories with prices and links to specific items that I would love to receive.
My first success came just a little before Black Friday, unsurprisingly. I got into a conversation with a family member (referred to as Alice from this point) about gift ideas for Christmas and how difficult it was to buy gifts for people without knowing what they want. I casually mentioned my /wish page saying that I had created it to alleviate the exact problem we were discussing. They thought it was a strange thing to do but, reflecting on it now, I think that’s more that having a personal website is a rare thing nowadays. They browsed over to the page on the spot and declared that I was going to receive item X (as I had listed on the page) from them for Christmas. I was really surprised as, until that moment, I didn’t really think that page would lead to anything and, indeed, they did later gift me that exact item and I was really grateful for both the item and that fact that I’d made a /wish page earlier in the year.
My only other success, so far, came around Christmas time. Along with Alice, I was spending time with distant relatives. They’d gifted me random things for Christmas. Some of the items were useful while the others would end up sitting on a shelf until the end of time… That’s not to say I wasn’t grateful about it and I was empathetic to the fact that they’d even acknowledged that they had no idea what to gift me. Privately, I had another discussion about Alice about the whole ordeal and how I felt about receiving random things I had no use for. A week later, they came to me and handed me a Mullvad VPN gift card. (It wasn’t a “make up” gift or anything. I believe it was more in response to the fact that I’d helped them with a few administrative tasks over that period.) It turned out that they’d asked Alice if she had any suggestions for something I would actually appreciate. The system works. :)
Anyway, that’s enough rambling from me. I have mentioned the concept to a few people in my life and will continue to do it if the opportunity arises. I love the concept as it means that everyone gets what they want and waste it drastically limited. If you’re curious to know what my /wish page looks like, feel free to add me on Signal. Make sure you leave a message about why you’re adding me or I might reject you thinking that you’re a bot/spammer.