Letter Writing

It’s hard to believe that I’ve spent the last three years writing letters. Once I joined the Letter Writers Alliance and found a kindred spirit in my pen pal (read more about that here),  I was hooked on snail mail. And why not? Sending a letter is a wonderful, slow, reflective thing. It forces me to slow down, take inventory, figure out where I am.

Though, I’ll admit to not always knowing what I plan to share before I start writing or planning to say something and sealing the letter before realizing I left it out. What I’ve learned is that’s totally okay. Having a pen pal is a relationship, not a one-and-done deal. There’s a give and take. You share the boring, you share the personal. Sometimes you get really courageous and share the really personal. Mostly, you just write.

When I was making my list of 33 Things, I included “Write 33 letters”. But that’s not really a challenge. In fact, I will probably have 33 letters written in a few months. Letter writing is already part of my weekly life, a habit cultivated over years.

Last February, I participated in A Month of Letters and committed to mailing 23 items (one for each day the mail runs) throughout the month. I posted about it on social media and asked for people who would be interested in receiving a letter from me. I had quite a few responses — five, I think — and sent each of them a hand-written letter tucked into a handmade envelope. Everyone I wrote to wrote back and it was awesome to connect in that way, especially with a couple of ladies on Instagram who I didn’t know that well.

So I’m going to amend my goal of writing 33 letters a bit and say that I want to write a letter to 33 different people. That is going to be a challenge because I only regularly (or semi-regularly) write to about eight people. That means I need about 25 more! Twenty-five!!

I plan to document this process, taking a photograph of each of the letters I send out (not including anything personal, I promise**) and share my progress periodically on the blog. I get so excited about writing letters, and I want to share that excitement and push myself! I mean, who doesn’t love receiving a letter? It’s one of life little joys.

Are you interested? If you’d like to receive a letter from me, hand written and definitely in an envelope hand made by me, send me your address to lindsayecrandall [at] gmail.com.

**I promise not to share your information with anybody. This is just for fun!