Pen Palling

Yesterday's Wordless Wednesday post leads on quite nicely to today's post, since I've recently become involved in letter writing.

When I was younger I used to email a few people that I 'met' online through 'e-pal' groups. A couple of those did progress into actual letter writing friendships but they never really lasted because for the most part we were teenagers and we just didn't have that kind of sticking power.

Now I'm a boring grown up, I only ever seem to get boring mail and I've often longed for a pen pal or two who I could write to about the random things I get up to. I enjoy writing and there's nothing quite so fun as getting home to find a letter waiting for you.

But I didn't really know where to actually begin looking for letter-writing friends. After all, you're putting your address out there in a public forum, you want to be sure that you're not handing over your details to crazy stalker axe-murderers. I found Postcrossing but couldn't seem to get into it, I wanted more than just postcards; I wanted letters.

At the beginning of the year I got into Bullet Journalling which introduced me to a whole interweb full of clever, crafty, organised people when I joined a couple of Bullet Journal groups on Social Media. On Facebook there are a whole host of Bullet Journal-themed spin-off groups, one of which was the Pen Pal group.

It's very well organised and I quickly wrote two letters and fired them off to a couple of people. That was back in February, I went to Wales, wrote another handful of letters on my way home, found at least one waiting for me when I returned, and things have sort of snowballed from there.

I'm writing to people not just in the UK (there's about three people in England I've exchanged at least one or two letters with), but also Canada (I think I've written to two people there) and also Pennsylvania, Virginia and California in America. And remember how I said that Postcrossing wasn't for me, because I wanted more than postcards? Well, I've exchanged postcards with several people as well!

I spend most of my day at work staring at a computer screen so it's nice to do something else when I get home, be that knitting, colouring in, or decorating plain lined paper with washi tape and stickers and pouring out my thoughts on the day to someone in another part of the world. It's very relaxing and there's nothing nicer than coming home at the end of a long day to a nice envelope on your doormat. Mr Click observed last week that I get more mail than him now!

Plus it's encouraging me to work on my handwriting, which I've improved from a tiny printed scrawl to something which might not be an elegant cursive, but which is certainly a little easier on the eyes. Perhaps I'll share a snapshot of it some time.

When was the last time you wrote a letter? Do you have any pen pals?