I write letters. I've been writing letters seriously since 2010. What is serious letter writing? Currently, my definition of 'serious' is an average of ten letters a week. Why would I do that? First, and foremost is because I was poleaxed for two years (2005 - 2007). During that time I lost my job, my ability to walk, developed chronic pain issues, had three surgeries, and spent all that time house bound. I also spent a total of eight months in bed during that two year period. I battled not just physical pain, but mental issues such as anger and depression. Thanks to a combination of friends and Pastor Marilyn (pastor at St. Paul UMC at the that time) I pulled through. When Pastor Marilyn had the temerity to suggest something good was going to come from all my suffering, I cussed her thoroughly. (Sigh....let me apologize here publicly to her.) I couldn't imagine how anything good could come from two years of misery.
Well, good things have come from that misery. I've always been an optimist, but now I do have a greater understanding of faithfulness. However, that's another blog. Back to letter writing.... That two year period in my life made me understand how reaching out with snail mail comforts people. I sporadically wrote cards and notes to people who were ill as soon as I was up and about. It was when I left the town I'd lived in for twenty years to start vagabonding I realized the importance of letters to maintain friendships. Paula has written me every week (sometimes more than once) from the week I left Texas. If we still kept paper address books, my page in hers would be multiple pages since in eleven years, I've had almost twenty addresses.
The number of letters per week I write has slowly evolved over the past eleven years. First, I realized I should write Paula back. Second, I re-connected with an uber elderly person (over age 90!) who I thought would like letters since those seemed a lot more natural to her than electronic communication. Third, since I have a lot of friends older than me, some started getting sick and I wanted to be in touch with them in a meaningful way. (I dislike sappy 'get well soon' greeting cards.) Finally, some of my youngest friends seemed to need the comfort and stability of weekly letters.
So, at this point in time I'm writing Paula, the uber elderly, the sick/recovering, friends my age, and young friends. Here's what I have discovered: Sick people, even when recovered, were mum about their recovery. They wanted to stay on the letter list! Young friends, even when they want to be more connected by responding to my letters, are struggling with the explosion of their careers as the pandemic winds down, but they want the connectivity and don't have time to be responders. Friends I've been writing fall into two categories - those who write/call/email/text back and those who are silent.
Now, I was fine writing all these people and adding on to the list by chance UNTIL the pandemic. That's when I just lost control, and my blog postings suffered. It IS more difficult to write so many people every week when we are keeping Cedric 40 hours a week. I'm really mentally tired at the end of the work day, so I don't tend to write during the week. We had a solid year of nanny time during the pandemic with no breaks. It was also hard to 'thin' the weekly letter list since we all looked forward to real mail during the pandemic. And, if that wasn't enough to affect my blog, well, I struggled for writing topics in weekly letters beyond toddler antics, and since we weren't going anywhere or doing anything for a solid year, well blog topics were even harder to find.
If I'm going to continue my blog, I need something to change. My solution is to move some people who just like to get letters to a monthly basis while continuing to write weekly the sick, the uber elderly, and people who respond to me. That solution will cut my weekly letter outflow about in half. That allows me to write a blog entry more often. Blog entries take much more work to write than weekly letters. First, you need the idea. Second, you need to formulate the idea. Third, you need to polish the formulation. Fourth, you need to polish again. Some blog entries take several hours to write, so I can wind up publishing exactly what I want to say. Hopefully, you will begin reading interesting entries again because they will be better entries than the past year's offerings.
Finally, if you got moved to the monthly letter list, well, it's not because I don't treasure your friendship. it's because I want to redistribute my writing time. Of course, you can always fake being sick if you really, really need my idiot letters.
