Wednesday, April 3, 2013

To send or not to send, that is the question...

Well Hello there. Sam here.

You know, I've been thinking a lot lately about letters. Not letters as in A,B,C, but letters as in the kind that people used to write to each other before we created this thing called e-mail. I miss letters. E-mail is all well and good, but there's nothing like opening your mailbox and finding a hand-written letter that someone has taken the time to write for you. It doesn't matter if their handwritting is sloppy or they've written in perfect caligraphy, a letter is a letter is a letter, and I love them all, regardless of length or sloppiness. There's something incredibly personal about writing out your letters rather than typing them in an e-mail and I think that's where some of the allure lies. You can see how this person was feeling in the letter, whether they wrote fast or slow, whether they pushed down with their pen too hard or not quite hard enough. There might be coffee or ink stains on the paper or creased edges and I love that about letters because of what it can say about the author, and who they're writing to.

Being the introvert that I am, I find that I am much better at getting my thoughts out on paper rather than speaking them aloud, so letters are one of my favorite mediums. Sadly, I haven't written or recieved an ACTUAL hand-written letter in quite a while. I want to fix this, so I'm going to start writing letters again. Whether I actually send these letters or not, I'm not sure yet, but just being able to write them to the people I love and have my feelings out on paper will do wonders for my sanity. That's what I'm hoping anyway, so here goes nothing. This year I vow to write letters to anyone and everyone.

Recently, I've taken up the habit of sticking notes in my library books before I return them so that the next person who reads the book will find a little surprise message inside. I like to think that whoever recieves the note will continue the chain and write a note of their own to whoever has the book next. It makes me happy to think of all these little notes floating around between strangers. Like we're connected somehow through the pages of a book and the ink stains on our fingers. I encourage all of you who love the library as much as I do to try and write notes of your own, it's a lot of fun. And who knows, maybe we'll find each others notes someday. I'd like that.

As well as regular letters, I also enjoy a good postcard, so much so that I've decided to start collecting them. So far my collection is only one postcard strong, but it's from London so I think that should count for something, right? One London postcard equals at least three ordinary postcards. You heard it here first. I hope to get more postcards soon from various European locales. (Joe, I'm looking at you. Amsterdam postcard? Heh, heh? Pretty please!) Until then I will content myself with writing letters to those I care about. Maybe I'll send them, maybe I won't. I guess we'll just have to wait and see. But I think the importance isn't in the sending, it's in the writing itself and being able to express yourself in anyway you can. These letters will be my way of telling the people I love just how much they mean to me, even if I can't actually tell them in person or they never get to read what I write. I'll know how I feel and hopefully someday they'll know too. Until then I'll just keeping writing letters and I hope you do the same.

Until next time.
Love and Chaos,
Sam

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