Dear President Trump,

So it appears we are pseudo pen-pals now that there is an auto-reply function attached to this contact page sending polite thank you notes to us odd-balls sending you our thoughts. I wasn’t sure yesterday if this was a one-off but now that it’s happened twice, it seems I’ll have another piece of junk email to delete every day. If there was an actual human involved in the reply emails, I wouldn’t delete them at all; I’d save them as precious mementos from an insanely difficult era and as some evidence that my communication efforts toward you weren’t just going into the White House email trash.

This lack of real exchange is a shame because I put a lot of time and effort into these daily missives to you. I know I’ve told you I work for the VA. Because of this, I have to be careful not to work on these messages or send them during my official tour of duty to avoid violating whatever that rule is prohibiting federal employees from engaging in political activity on their work time. Each message takes me a good 45 minutes to draft and edit. It would be easier if there weren’t the 2500 character limit since it’s so much easier to go on and on, but I actually appreciate this limit since it’s forcing me to be a better editor and to get to my points more efficiently. All this ends up taking a pretty big chunk out of my days for sending something out into a void that gets absolutely no feedback or acknowledgement from the intended recipient (aside, now, from an auto-reply). Laura does read them all in weekly batches and gives me her thoughts about them so that’s definitely helpful, but some days I really wonder whether it makes sense to continue this. I know I’ve expressed similar doubts to you before and just as before, I’m going to press on because it helps me deal with the reality of you and not put my head in the sand or spin out of control with anxiety. I am also invested in staying in the mix and stubbornly want to be able to say at the end of your time in office that I wrote you EVERY SINGLE DAY for XXX?X days. So, we are in it together whether you know it and whether you care.

May we all be safe to say what we need to say.
May we all be happy to say it whether we get a response.
May we all be healthy and strong in our self-expressions.
May all of our communications be respectful and honest.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson