Happy Universal Letter Writing Week! I think that January just feels like such a long month because its cold, a lot of nature is dormant and there are no major holidays (other than the first of course.) So in an effort to break the monotony I always look for special events or holidays and just like every other year there is not much going on. But I did find it thought provoking that this week was Letter Writing Week and it suddenly triggered memory of many unanswered penpal letters.
It is funny how someone can love postcards so much and yet still be the World's Worst penpal. My entire childhood I loved the idea of penpals and had a few but never could get myself to sit still long enough to write an actual good letter. I had a couple loyal penpals that were steadfast despite my failures, for every 4 letters they wrote I would write 1. I think that it was because nothing seemed to ever be going on and then when it did I was too busy enjoying the moment to actually sit down and write about it. Also I hated grammar and spelling, as you may have noticed by now, and would instantly get writers block thinking about "is it I after E or E after I..." But in my defense this was well before spellcheck.
I hated using the dictionary; it never made sense to me that if you couldn't spell the word that you would have look it up among thousands of words in the largest book ever made. So in other words you had to know how to spell the word in order to find it to learn how to spell it; there's the problem. I would spend hours trying to formulate a proper letter, looking up every word I couldn't spell (all of them) just to be told after all my pain staking effort that my handwriting was like hen scratching. Thank God for email is all I can say.
Email is perfect for people like me: 1) you can spell check and catch most of your errors 2) now that it is a main streamed form of correspondence people seem to have started accepting our for are and sole instead of soul as mere typos. They seemed to forget there was an idiot on the other end typing that doesn't know how to spell the simplest of words. 3) there are no grammar rules. The evil comma finally vanquished, the horrid semi-colon struck down and I don't even have to use a period if I put enough spaces after things.
All kidding aside I was the worse penpal and I apologize to each and every one from the bottom of my heart. I love a good letter and the beautiful writings on the backs of each my old postcards. I want to be part of the great correspondence loop. So one of my personal goals for this year is to at least send out more than 5 Christmas cards and to include a note instead of just signing them...
...I better get started today this may take awhile.
