Ode to getting real mail
Cards and letters, what happened to them?
Hello readers! The winter season is upon us. I hope everyone is keeping warm and enjoying the month of December. I, myself, have been in a bit of a funk ever since Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving was nice and I enjoyed seeing family and eating a delicious meal, but I think I was worn out from the month of November and all that happened and now I am left exhausted, unmotivated, and completely wrapped up in my own head.
I have many ideas of what to write about this week, but lack the energy or motivation to write anything substantial, so I will chose to write about what I was doing previous to opening up this substack post.
I was writing holiday cards to strangers. There is a family that lives in Illinois that started a campaign to send cards to LGBT+ people who may be feeling sad this season, or may not have family in their lives. This is called the Pinta Pride Project. The Pinta Pride Project started with a young teenage girl who want to organize a pride parade in June a few years back. That girl/family has now added a card campaign that was started to bring a little light into people’s lives. Any one who wants a card can sign up to receive them, and then people can write cards to you. I heard about this through my church and participated last year in writing cards.
This project is right up my alley. I have always loved to write letters and cards to people. It seems like that is becoming a lost art. Is it because it takes time and money to do? Perhaps. Not everyone can afford to send mail to people. It also may be deemed to be bad for the environment as the person will throw the letter or card out after a while. But what isn’t bad for the environment now a days? We think stamps are expensive because they have gone up so much in price but for 73 cents I can send a card to California 2000 miles away from where I live. That is crazy cheap when you think about it. Imagine going up to someone and saying “I’ll give you 73 cents if you take this piece of paper and bring it to California.” No one would do it. But you can drop a letter in a box and it might travel 2000 miles to a specific person for that price. I’ve always thought it was incredible, to be honest.
Think of the momentary joy of the receiver. Who doesn’t love to open the mail box and find an actual card or letter, rather than advertisements or bills? I think we need more of this. I used to have pen pals all over the U.S. and Europe and loved writing and getting letters back. I think maybe we have lost the joy of delayed gratification.
I think of the box of letters my mom has from my father when they were dating. Will we be able to save texts for future generations to look at? Probably not.
Okay, I’m getting tired so I am going to stop here. So far I have written 5 cards to various strangers wishing them well and I plan to do 15 more and send them off this week. Feel free to click the link above and participate. It got me out of my head for a while thinking about others who need love this holiday season. And that is a joy and a delight that I needed.
Hope all is well with everyone.
Do you send out holiday cards anymore? Or did you ever? When was the last time you wrote a letter to someone and mailed it? I think it has been a while for me.
Til next time, thanks for reading,
J
The writing funk is real. I relate. It's been a minute since I've been able to put together cogent lines of poetry or essay. Letter writing, postcards, pen pals - oh yes! I handwrite two letters each year to my best from highschool—one for her birthday and one for the holiday season. However, my handwriting has become atrociously unreadable since I started using a keyboard 44 years ago. This - substack comments on each other's posts - is a way of being pen pals for me.
Let’s bring back writing letters!!! I have this great book called Letters from Hollywood and it’s pictures of all these letters written by the stars!