Letter in the age of e-mail

I wrote a letter this weekend, the old-fashioned way. Pen to paper. I even dragged out an old box of Air Mail papers that had been gathering dust for over more than 10 years . The act was not spontaneous: the letter was requested by a friend who's at US right now . It felt good. I wrote three pages, and my handwriting was not as bad as I feared it might be. Letter writing in the age of e-mail, some say, is a lost art; they bemoan the loss of feeling as pen scratches away at paper or the dreamy stare into space as you compose your feelings into words. I'm not so sure. The greater pleasure may be felt by the one who receives. To open your mailbox and see -- in the thicket of bills, junk mail, and magazines -- an envelope addressed by hand bearing a familiar name, then tearing it open as you retreat into your home, the thrill is all there. It is that which I miss.

I enjoyed the feel of the envelope in my hand as I trudged down to the GPO mailbox in the afternoon.

I have boxes of old letters too. Sometimes I start going through them, planning to throw some away since they are not from my near and dear but I get side tracked reading them and usually end up stuffing them back in the old mail box. I used to write a lot of long letters during the 90's and then lots of long emails in the early 2000's but over the years it’s become a line or two instead of the pages it used to be. I write to fewer people, and those I write also write very short emails. One problem is that I will start getting phone calls in return instead of letters ......and maybe I’ll have to quit talking on the phone in order to make my friends write ....