Growing up, I used to love writing letters & sending greeting cards to family & friends.
What was even more thrilling was to receive cards, letters & replies by post.
It was a sheer delight to come home from school or college & see 1 or 2 letters or greeting cards waiting to be opened & read.
It was great.
We had a post-lady – I would eagerly look out for her, to see if she had any letters for me in her bag. And then that down cast feeling when she would just smile & carry on. No letters that day.
There was such excitement to just receive a letter by post.
Today I stand guilty.
I have become terrible at writing. All the typing has got me so out of touch with handwriting.
In fact it requires some effort to get my writing to be fairly legible.
I am guilty of not writing letters anymore.
Other than the rare card that comes by once a year around Christmas, no letters come in either.
As with all of us hooked onto the trappings of the socially networked world, ‘updates’ are through short text messages via the mobile or Facebook status updates, replying to someone else’s status message or an e-card in bulk using bcc.
What a radical shift from the doodle filled, detail rich letters we used to send & receive. And postcards when someone went abroad.
Collecting stamps I’m sure will soon be so out-dated as to appear as the hobby of the ancients.
Today we are digitally enabled but it’s about the spread of your contacts & the count not so much the depth. The ‘Hp all well, tk care.” msg while quicker & faster, lacks any emotional content whatsoever. And so it is.
Today you possibly need to see a Wikipedia page to understand this ancient pre-historic form of communication called letter writing using implements such as pen or pencil & paper (wotdat?)
Ask a child to write you a letter when they go on vacation & pat comes the reply “I’ll send you an email”.
Talk to little children today about letter writing & they will look at you aghast as if they just heard about a snake in the vicinity.
wingrish 
This is so true! I used to write letters to the teachers I had before I moved, but even they have said, “You should add me on Facebook, we can talk more, and it’s so much faster.”
Where have the times gone?
As Bob Dylan sang, ‘The times they are a-changing’..in this case, it seems to have changed already…forever.
It’s kind of depressing if you think about it. Everything is different now from when I was a little kid, and I’m barely sixteen!
Maybe you can drive change by keeping a dying art alive 🙂 Instead of communicating with family/friends via those impersonal emails & Facebook status updates, get back into good ole letter writing, its an art which keeps sender & receiver happy for sure 🙂
That’s a good idea! I think I might just do that. Thanks (:
It is so lovely to receive a letter or handwritten card and you are so right- a lost art for sure.
e-cards, e-mails or text msgs can never replace the charm of letters & postcards. The old order changeth..sigh
Reblogged this on youvegotsnailmail.
Thanks Meredithgotmail 🙂
Yes, this brings back memories from the past when I use to write letters rather much. Handwritten they had completely different…”aura”. I still do sometimes write a letter or 2, though rather rarely. Special moments – to write as well as receive ones.
Hey there Esenga, if you’ve got a spark of the art remaining, that’s great. Keep at it I’d say. If not for anything it will get antique value at some point in time 🙂
So true. I wish i had kept all the old letters. Dad mom loved ones. Never realised it would cease at some point.
Hi Mona, I know what you mean. I wish I could revive it again…but everyone I’d like to ‘write to’ are all on FB so there!!! Hardly any motivation, sigh
Hey Kavi …. This is so true …. n sad. Now its just the boring credit card statements … and also I remember my teachers smacking us for not crossing the t’s… dot the i’s… , forced us to write with fountain pens….nd people with good hand writing being called to write on the board…. now .. it doesnt’ matter… microsoft does the job…. in the font and size , colour
that you want…… 😦
credit card statements & bills !! eeeks…nothing to even motivate a post-box to hang in there 🙂 oh yes I remember the fountain pen days !
Hi Kavi, this really rings true, but we still send old-fashioned ‘thank you’ notes.
Hi Naomi, you are fortunate it hasn’t vanished..just make sure it doesn’t… with the looming other not-so-nice side of tech 🙂
There truly is something special about the gift of a letter. Thanks for stopping by/liking my blog ;o)
Oh yes there is 🙂 & will drop by your blog more frequently for sure.
Typing at the keyboard more and more means less and less hand-written…anything. If not for writing checks, I may lose the art altogether. Practice, practice, practice…makes perfect.
i’d settle for…imperfect… 🙂
Hi Hugmamma…I agree with you on pounding the keyboard. Likewise I seem to mostly write only checks..aaargh. I always commit to revive this fading art & until that happens….my own hand writing is getting worse 🙂
Ditto for me. 😉