Memories of Snail Mail

Writing has pretty much always been my chosen form of communication.

From my teenage years through the late 1990's I wrote letters to people, longhand, with pen and paper.

I know there will be those among you who belong to an age in which you have never actually written a letter and mailed it via the post office. OK, so maybe you have sent someone a birthday card, but not an actual letter.

I wrote letters to people.

In part, it was a habit I slipped into when I was a smaller kid and we were constantly moving around Europe, and beyond. My mom and I would make it to the local stationers and buy postcards I got to send home to family members back in Denmark.

And if we were staying some place for more than a couple of months, I'd get letters back from home!

It became more of "a thing" for me, when my mom and I moved pretty permanently to the south of Spain, when I was 13.

Because we lived in a retirement area, there was very little for a 13-year old to do... so writing letters home became very important to me, and it was at the same time I started keeping a journal.

Somehow, getting letters in the mail from aunts, uncles, cousins and more made me feel a little less isolated and disconnected.

Of course, my parents had divorced at that point, so many of the letters were also sent to my Dad, who was still back in Denmark.

All this letter writing probably helped me keep my sanity, during my teenage years.

In retrospect, it was also where I developed a "conversational" writing style... many of my blog posts and articles tend to read like I am writing a letter to someone. My journals — back then — were pretty much "letters to myself."

There are a lot of things about our modern technology that I really like, but I must admit that I do miss snail mail; that feeling of going to the mailbox and finding an actual handwritten letter there... serving as a sort of physical evidence that a real person is connected to me, in a way we just don't experience with email.

Take my word for it. It is different to get a letter in the mail!

I find myself having these nostalgic thoughts about snail mail as a bit of a counterpoint to the current discussion about AI comments on Steemit which is a necessary, but potentially divisive topic.

I keep noodling the idea in my head, and keep coming back to the overall human "addiction" to have someone else — or some form of automation — do everything FOR us.

But why?

Why are we so eager to not do even the most basic things that are part of the human experience?

I struggle to come up with a good answer...

In the meantime, I am not ashamed to say that I miss the days of snail mail.

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great remainder of your week!

How about you? Were you ever into old-fashioned correspondence and letter writing? If so, do you miss it at all, or are you glad it is gone? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — Not posted elsewhere!)

Created at 2024.09.17 00:36 PDT
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