Hand-Written Letters and Motivation

Oh man, oh man, I wish I'd heard of this a month ago.

While perusing Facebook (the blessing and curse to all our lives), I found mention by Postcrossing, which I subscribe to, about a blog entry centering on letter-writing. Well, I love writing letters! or, I did before I got lazy, and I also like to blame it on how other people don't write back but, really, if you're dedicated to writing letters, others' responses should not matter. Yes, it'd be nice to hear from other people, but my values are not theirs, and apparently I'm not worth 20 minutes and the latest Forever stamp.

So the above blog-author (or blauthor) touched on how difficult it was to get into, the letter-writing process, but after diligent application and persistence she gathered momentum. Indeed, she came to enjoy it as an exercise and a pastime, and her letters got longer and longer. That's wonderful, I thought, but why is an average citizen so driven to pour time and effort into a hand-written letter? I did it because the electricity in my building went out for two days. I sent out 40 postcards and letters to everyone in my address book, that's how restless I got.


But she doesn't make mention of the local grid failing. Instead, she talks about this wonderful event called A Month of Letters. Have you heard of it? I haven't, and if I was going to it should've been just over three weeks ago: it's a challenge to write a letter nearly every day of February (barring weekends and holidays, or any day the mail doesn't run). I mean, you could do it any month, and the badge the latter blauthor came up with doesn't specify any month—I could totally do this for March—but it just feels good to be part of something, you know? I did NaNoWriMo, I could easily crank out a letter (or long postcard: I can write extremely small), and feeling like I'm part of a movement or a project helps motivate me to continue what I'm doing.

It sounds ridiculous when I write it out loud like that. There's no reason I shouldn't be able to write out the letters I want to, just because I want to. I have a red plastic folder stuffed nearly to bursting with spare stationery, leftover writing sheets (from hotels, the cruise, samples from stationery stores, leftovers and remnants, &c.), and about a dozen postcards and letters waiting to be responded to.

I'm in the process of constructing a large, highly visible calendar to remind me of the things I want to do on a daily basis. I'd better just include "write a letter" on the short list. Even if I knocked one out each week, that'd still be something.