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Post by Mia on Jan 1, 2022 22:46:14 GMT
What are your snail mail goals for 2022?
I want to get back towards replying in a more timely manner. I also want to promote snail mail and this forum more than I have been doing...
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Post by although on Jan 2, 2022 3:20:07 GMT
Hmm, goals you say... I've never actually finished a bottle of ink. I've got a bottle of asa-gao that's getting down pretty low. My goal is to finish that bottle by the end of the year!
Everyone gets letters written in blurple until that bottle is finished!
I really don't know. I would like to have nicer handwriting. But, that's a hard thing to measure, and I feel like slowing down and writing more deliberately tends to make my words even more clunky and stilted than usual.
Honestly, I think the reason I enjoy writing (and reading) has more to do with slowing down and savoring the moment than with accomplishing goals. I'm just going to try to make sure that I make time for letters.
There! question answered!
mike
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graphitediaries
Pencils
Posts: 61
Looking for Penpals?: Yes. Global penpals welcome
Country I live in is: Quebec
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Post by graphitediaries on Jan 2, 2022 3:30:18 GMT
As of yesterday when I sealed my last letter of the year, I had sent 473 mailings (letters and postcards combined), which blew away my goal of 365.
This year, I will not aim for a specific number, but instead aim to send mailings to people who are most likely to write me back.
I will keep my Postcrossing sent cards maxed out, I will respond to everyone who writes me within a week. I will send birthday cards to everyone whose birthday I know.
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Post by Catida on Jan 2, 2022 10:27:42 GMT
I have not thought of any goals regarding snail mail. I guess my goal is to find some time for writing letters in between trying to reach my other goals
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Post by eefa on Jan 2, 2022 13:24:36 GMT
I'm not really a goal person (apart from at work!). I think maybe checking on to this site more than once every 6 or 7 weeks might be a start! No point saying that I'll reply to letters in a more timely manner; instead I'll stop apologising (it gets repetitive!) for the slow delays and learn to accept that I'm not fast at replying to letters but that doesn't mean I should beat myself up over it.
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Post by ginny on Jan 2, 2022 14:03:48 GMT
Like eefa, I basically think it's time to stop apologising for delays (and I will ask my friends to stop apologising as well). Life happens, and I'm sure we all know that in an ideal world we would write back in a timely manner, so basically, we keep apologising for not having that ideal world - sounds a bit daft, doesn't it. I don't really like the idea of goals (you can miss them so easily!) or resolutions (blah!) for the new year, but I like to sit back and look on the year that has gone by and try to figure out if I can do better. 2021 has been a bit of a sh*t show for me due to family health issues, and there wasn't anything I could have done about that - it influenced everything I did or did not do. So, I guess I'll do my best and take it as it comes as far as correspondence is concerned. I hope to be a bit more organised regarding storing and keeping track of letters etc. - there's room for improvement in that department
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Post by InsomniaQueen on Jan 3, 2022 16:31:37 GMT
I'm not really a goal person (apart from at work!). I think maybe checking on to this site more than once every 6 or 7 weeks might be a start! No point saying that I'll reply to letters in a more timely manner; instead I'll stop apologising (it gets repetitive!) for the slow delays and learn to accept that I'm not fast at replying to letters but that doesn't mean I should beat myself up over it. Excellent plan! I get so many letters from pen pals apologizing for delays. There is no reason to apologize! Life happens and if pen pals don't understand that, maybe they should choose another hobby. That's my opinion anyway. I am delighted to receive your letters whenever you can send them.
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Post by michelleg on Jan 13, 2022 0:24:45 GMT
As of yesterday when I sealed my last letter of the year, I had sent 473 mailings (letters and postcards combined), which blew away my goal of 365. This year, I will not aim for a specific number, but instead aim to send mailings to people who are most likely to write me back. I will keep my Postcrossing sent cards maxed out, I will respond to everyone who writes me within a week. I will send birthday cards to everyone whose birthday I know. Whoa! Impressive!
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Post by allanorn on Jan 14, 2022 18:54:51 GMT
I’m contemplating an experiment with shorter handwritten letters so I can turn them around faster.
From what I’ve been reading, Western handwriting speed is around ten words a minute short of other encoding methods like Gregg shorthand. Based on my current letter length and timing myself I can easily spend ninety minutes to two hours writing a single letter. From what I can tell, letters sent during the 20th century when mail was the inexpensive form of communication weren’t all that long: perhaps 500-700 words. For me, I can’t write more than three letters a day, and that’s a full day of writing letters and taking breaks (e.g., I’m on vacation).
My working hypothesis is that if I put a little effort on brevity and not answering every question at length, I can get letters down to about an hour each. That way I can answer letters without blocking out a few hours on the weekend or using a bunch of vacation time to reply.
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Post by ginny on Jan 14, 2022 21:16:36 GMT
I’m contemplating an experiment with shorter handwritten letters so I can turn them around faster. From what I’ve been reading, Western handwriting speed is around ten words a minute short of other encoding methods like Gregg shorthand. Based on my current letter length and timing myself I can easily spend ninety minutes to two hours writing a single letter. From what I can tell, letters sent during the 20th century when mail was the inexpensive form of communication weren’t all that long: perhaps 500-700 words. For me, I can’t write more than three letters a day, and that’s a full day of writing letters and taking breaks (e.g., I’m on vacation). My working hypothesis is that if I put a little effort on brevity and not answering every question at length, I can get letters down to about an hour each. That way I can answer letters without blocking out a few hours on the weekend or using a bunch of vacation time to reply. Depends on the language you use. German words can be really long, so even if you wrote only 500-700 words - it kind of adds up. (26 words) If you say this in German you'll end up like this:
Kommt darauf an, welche Sprache du benutzt. Deutsche Wörter können echt lang sein. Also, selbst wenn du nur 500-700 Wörter schreiben würdest... es läppert sich irgendwie zusammen. (28 words, but it looks a lot longer, doesn't it!)
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Post by allanorn on Jan 14, 2022 21:32:39 GMT
I’m contemplating an experiment with shorter handwritten letters so I can turn them around faster. From what I’ve been reading, Western handwriting speed is around ten words a minute short of other encoding methods like Gregg shorthand. Based on my current letter length and timing myself I can easily spend ninety minutes to two hours writing a single letter. From what I can tell, letters sent during the 20th century when mail was the inexpensive form of communication weren’t all that long: perhaps 500-700 words. For me, I can’t write more than three letters a day, and that’s a full day of writing letters and taking breaks (e.g., I’m on vacation). My working hypothesis is that if I put a little effort on brevity and not answering every question at length, I can get letters down to about an hour each. That way I can answer letters without blocking out a few hours on the weekend or using a bunch of vacation time to reply. Depends on the language you use. German words can be really long, so even if you wrote only 500-700 words - it kind of adds up. (26 words) If you say this in German you'll end up like this:
Kommt darauf an, welche Sprache du benutzt. Deutsche Wörter können echt lang sein. Also, selbst wenn du nur 500-700 Wörter schreiben würdest... es läppert sich irgendwie zusammen. (28 words, but it looks a lot longer, doesn't it!)
Yeah, I should have said “on the order of 10 words/min” instead of “about 10 words/min”. It’s definitely slower than manual typing (~20-40 words/min) or computer keyboarding (~50-100/min).
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Post by radellaf on Jan 16, 2022 2:22:06 GMT
I’m contemplating an experiment with shorter handwritten letters so I can turn them around faster. I've certainly thought about that. Four sides of A5 feels like a satisfying length for a letter with some substance, and at that rate I could keep up with replies. But, IDK, I like some of the longer letter writing. It is _really_ slow, though. A 10 or 12 sides letter takes me 4-6 hours of pen-to-paper time to write, not counting time procrastinating, googling instead of writing, picking out ink colors, printing stuff or stationery, etc.
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Post by katiel on Jan 16, 2022 8:10:02 GMT
I’m contemplating an experiment with shorter handwritten letters so I can turn them around faster. Yeah, I’ve tried this in the past, too. And I think something like “oh yeah, I just wanted to say something about [something] really quick,” and the next thing I know, I’ve suddenly written like half a page on it. I’ve had to accept the fact that I’m just very chatty. I may write an 8 page letter, but I certainly don’t expect one of that length in response. I’m generally happy with whatever shows up in my mailbox. 🙂 So, long story short, I hope it works out better for you. 🙂 I’ve given up and just write whatever I want now. It may take me awhile to reply, (and a while to do the actual writing), but I enjoy the process, so I’m alright with that.
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Post by hoyabella on Jan 16, 2022 12:07:30 GMT
It is _really_ slow, though. A 10 or 12 sides letter takes me 4-6 hours of pen-to-paper time to write, not counting time procrastinating, googling instead of writing, picking out ink colors, printing stuff or stationery, etc. This is me 😂😂😂😂 If I didn't (waste) spend time picking out the stationery, it would take me half as much time!
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Post by allanorn on Jan 18, 2022 1:57:21 GMT
Four sides of A5 feels like a satisfying length for a letter with some substance, and at that rate I could keep up with replies. But, IDK, I like some of the longer letter writing. It is _really_ slow, though. A 10 or 12 sides letter takes me 4-6 hours of pen-to-paper time to write, not counting time procrastinating, googling instead of writing, picking out ink colors, printing stuff or stationery, etc. That's the conundrum I'm facing. Last year I was spending close to two hours a letter without any ink/paper/envelope concerns. Finding 2- to 3-hour blocks of time is far more difficult than finding one-hour blocks, so I'd put off letters until I had a block of time where I could tackle them. I frequently ended up with a massive pile-up that I'd have to triage over entire weekends, which made me resent writing letters and left me burnt out on more than one occasion... which would eventually start another pile-up a couple months later. It's also not helping my correspondents who were continually at the back end of that triage process. Yeah, I’ve tried this in the past, too. And I think something like “oh yeah, I just wanted to say something about [something] really quick,” and the next thing I know, I’ve suddenly written like half a page on it. I’ve had to accept the fact that I’m just very chatty. I may write an 8 page letter, but I certainly don’t expect one of that length in response. I’m generally happy with whatever shows up in my mailbox. 🙂 I'm not against writing a long letter when it's warranted, but I need to look into why my letters are taking so long in general. Fortunately I'm not looking to chop my time in half, but a twenty-percent improvement may be the difference I need to keep focused and happy with writing letters.
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