Kelly’s Unnecessary Blog

Last Thursday I sent more snail mail than I have in probably the last five years. You???ve heard the winging and moaning from the postal service and it???s true. The telephone and email take the place of the letters I used to write.

My most prolific letter-writing phase was during my teenage years after we moved from Ohio to Wisconsin. I left behind lifelong friends and we all did a good job keeping up. At the time, long distance was a luxury not to be squandered, and cell phones were from the Star Trek future, so we wrote letters. (Dinosaurs still roamed the Earth, too, but that???s a different story.)

In college, I still wrote letters, still to my friends and with the addition of my parents, as I was now out of town. For a couple of years I was very creative with the packaging of the letters to my parents, doing anything thing I could to avoid using a regular envelope but still have it go through on one stamp.

I gradually stopped writing letters, or sending cards, or mailing anything. Even bills I now pay electronically. I can???t remember the last time I stuck a stamp on something.

Last Wednesday, there was a flurry of address exchanging on Tweak Today, and Thursday I mailed out seven pieces. There will be a second wave in a couple of days. It???s mostly Minneapolis postcards, but for the people I know a little better, it???s more customized. I mailed two Washingtons, a California, New York, England, Scotland, and France in the first batch. I will be adding another California, a Tennessee, Idaho, Ohio, and Netherlands. I typed a couple of the email addresses incorrectly so the messages were undeliverable, so those addresses will be delayed, but I???ll still do it.

The post office clerk got a big kick out of my taking a picture before I???d relinquish my mail to him.

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May 12, 2010