Can I just say that I love February? Every year in February, I take part in 2 letter writing events which always bring me a lot of wonderful mail from many of my penpals and some new friends as well. I'll tell you a little about each one in case you are interested in joining.
The Month of Letters Challenge- This is a challenge where people sign up to send a letter every day and to respond to any mail that comes in from the "Lettermo" challenge. Many of the participants have participated for years and have their profile on the Lettermo page. It's fun because you can search people with similar interests, have an understanding that you will get a reply from your mail and most likely connect with someone who really enjoys writing letters. I have exchanged letters with so many interesting people through this event. My first piece of mail for LetterMo is going to my penpal Alenka in Slovenia.
InCoWriMo- Similar idea. International Correspondence Writing Month- Send at least 1 piece of personal mail every day during the month of February. One of the differences with this challenge is that there's a list of participants but you don't know anything about them. If you want to write to your own penpals, you can do that too. One thing I like about this challenge is that I never know if I'm going to get any mail from this challenge- or who/where it will come from. It's just kind of adventurous for me. When I first participated in this challenge (3 years ago?), it was hosted by someone else and it changed hands last year. So, I think there are some changes, but I'm still glad to have the opportunity to write. My first piece of mail for InCoWriMo is going to be sent to The Henlo Press, who is hosting the InCoWriMo group on Facebook- I think.... or are they hosting InCoWriMo? I will probably figure that out during the month!
I know that snail mail and letter writing is pretty old-fashioned, but I LOVE it. As a child, my nana used to send me cards and notes through the mail all the time. The excitement I felt when finding that I had mail that I wasn't expecting was great. As I grew older, finding mail in my mailbox and recognizing the writing from a friend or family member always made me smile. (I am actually very sad that many teens right now don't know what their friends' handwriting looks like, or even some of their family.) It was always nice to know that someone had been thinking about me and cared enough to send a little note to say hello. Nowadays, some of my penpals are my closest friends. We share joyful moments as well as struggles that we are going through. I find that letter writers usually take the time to write so their letters are not shallow or for lack of a better way to say it, pointless. It takes effort to make time to write to someone.
I will try to write some posts about both of these challenges and what I'm sending/receiving for mail. If you are participating in either event and would like a letter, feel free to leave a comment or message me. If you're not participating in the challenge and you just want to catch up, I'd be glad to send you a piece of mail too if you tell me you'd like some. Sometimes I don't send mail to friends/family because some people think I'm odd for enjoying writing, but I think during this time of Covid, people have started to appreciate any kind of connection they can find.
