The 52 Letters Project

Saving Change on Stationery

I’ve received stationery and note cards as gifts from a number of people over the years, and even though I have enough to write hundreds of letters, I can’t help but buy my own stationery every now and again. In the past couple weeks, I’ve been tempted by stationery with M&Ms and retro images of national parks in the Southwest. I’ve found note cards with pop-up koi and adorable note cards with owls and gnomes. And there is a new Papyrus store opening in my town later this year. How can I resist that?

But let’s face it, buying stationery isn’t really a cheap hobby, especially considering the fact that mailing letters isn’t inexpensive either. I managed to avoid buying any super expensive stationery for several months, but if the urge strikes, there are a few places I turn to for relatively inexpensive but fun note cards and paper. Read more…

Author name:: JoAnna
Publish date:: May 17th, 2012
Discussion:: No Comments
Categories:: News

Letter #20: Bethany

I’ve met a lot of interesting people during my travels, but one of the most significant trips I’ve taken—a four-day hike on the Inca Trail with my husband—led us to meet Bethany and her husband, Matt. At the time we were visiting Peru, I didn’t have a travel blog, I wasn’t an active freelance writer and, quite frankly, I had just been let go from a job and was hoping I’d have something to go back to upon our return home. It was a time of change for me, and the hike to Machu Picchu along the Inca Trail was, I suppose, a self-reflective journey of sorts (though it certainly was an exercise in physical exertion as well). We hiked with a small group on the Inca Trail—only six hikers and two guides. My husband and I, and Bethany and her husband, made up half of the group.

Occasionally my husband and I are fortunate enough to meet another couple that shares our interests in traveling, the arts and intellectual curiosity, and that we genuinely like and get along with. For four days, we got to know Matt and Bethany as our guides pointed out interesting natural features along the path and we shared long conversations over meals. Though we finally arrived at Machu Picchu in the rain, we thoroughly enjoyed our time together, although it also signaled the end of this portion of the trip. They went their way—a train back to Cusco—and we went ours—a natural hot spring in Aguas Caliente. Read more…

Author name:: JoAnna
Publish date:: May 15th, 2012
Discussion:: No Comments
Categories:: 52 Letters

Thoughts on Letter Writing: Week #19

One of my favorite things about coming home after a week or two of traveling is going through the mail that has collected while I’ve been gone. I often get a magazine or two, and maybe something from one of my current jobs has come in, but I almost always have a letter or two from a friend as well.

I spent the last week with two very good friends of mine taking a road trip through the Desert Southwest. We caught up over the hours we spent in the car and hiking in the national parks, and it reminded me a lot of letter writing. We’ve stayed in touch through digital means, but there’s certainly no substitution to actually spending time with one another. (As a side note, one of them is currently on a kick of creating her own envelopes, and I’m hoping she’ll send one to me!) Read more…

Author name:: JoAnna
Publish date:: May 13th, 2012
Discussion:: No Comments
Categories:: News

Pen Preferences

It drives me crazy when I’m going along, writing a letter, and the ink from my pen gets particularly scratchy or blotchy. It may write well for a few words and then the ink seems to dry up … and then it blots all over the place. Pens that are really inconsistent like this make it hard for me to write a letter because I want to focus on the content and the enjoyment of writing, but all I can think about is how obnoxious the pen is.

Though I will definitely write with whatever tools are available to me at any given time, there are a few types of pens that I’ve grown to love over the years.

First, I love to write with colorful or sparkly ink. I like the surprise of colored ink, and I love the whimsy of sparkles. For a long time I had a green sparkly pen that wrote so smoothly it’s what I used for every letter, but it has long since dried up. However, for some reason, most of the generic colored pens I’ve had over the years haven’t been as consistent as my green pen, and I often have to make the sacrifice of a slightly scratchy letter in exchange for the fun colors. Read more…

Author name:: JoAnna
Publish date:: May 10th, 2012
Discussion:: 4 Comments
Categories:: News

Letter #19: Roberta

One of the things I enjoyed most about the academic side of college life was really getting to know some of the teachers in my program area. Unlike high school, where many teachers were in my life for a single class for a single year, college offered the opportunity to take multiple classes from the same instructors and bond with them over a shared interest in an academic topic.

Roberta was one of those teachers for me. Shortly after starting college, I joined a few student organizations that were relevant to the academic field I wanted to pursue. One of these groups became the focus of my extracurricular activities, and Roberta was the faculty adviser of the group, so we spent a lot of time with each other strategizing ways to expand the club’s offerings for our members. Read more…

Author name:: JoAnna
Publish date:: May 8th, 2012
Discussion:: No Comments
Categories:: 52 Letters

Thoughts on Letter Writing: Week #18

This week’s theme was writing letters on the go!

Per usual, I had the typical to-do list to tackle, but I savored my time away from the computer. While watching television one night, I wrote a letter. When my husband stuck a quick nap in last Sunday, I scribbled a couple notes instead of sleeping. And when I had to ferry our foreign exchange student around to a of couple stores so she could pick up a few last-minute prom items with another friend, I waited in the car, feverishly writing handwritten letters.

I don’t mind giving up time to do other things if it means I can spend that time writing snail mail. One of the people I responded to this week wrote about her day job in a demanding leadership role, and how writing letters is a true form of escape for her. I know that the idea of writing letters is a stressful one to some people. They haven’t grown up doing it, they don’t think they have anything to write about or they just don’t like the act of writing. I am the complete opposite. Like this woman I wrote to this week, writing letters is a way to get away from all those things I’m stressed about or have to deal with in the “real world.” Read more…

Author name:: JoAnna
Publish date:: May 6th, 2012
Discussion:: No Comments
Categories:: News

Are Community Mailboxes the Answer?

There was a lot of talk in my hometown of Las Vegas over the last couple weeks about the budget problems facing the U.S. Postal Service. One of the topics of conversation that frequently surfaced had to do with saving money through the use of community mailboxes. According to an article in our local newspaper, the Las Vegas Sun, of Las Vegas’ approximately 600,000 addresses, 443,000 are served by community mailboxes. This high percentage of community mailboxes is in stark contrast to other cities across America, where many homes have their own mailbox.

Growing up, my family lived in the country outside of a decent-sized town in Wisconsin. When we first moved there, we had to walk about half a mile to get our mail, which was in a bank of mailboxes on the main road. This always seemed like a chore to me given the distance between our house and the mailbox, and when we finally got our own mailbox, I was thrilled. But there are many neighborhoods where a bank of mailboxes would sit across the street from the dozens of homes they serve. Now that this is the norm for us (and completely common in Las Vegas), I can’t imagine having our own mailbox anymore. Read more…

Author name:: JoAnna
Publish date:: May 3rd, 2012
Discussion:: No Comments
Categories:: News

Letter #18: Amiee

It seems like in the past few years, I’ve become friends with a lot of people who were headed down the freelance path with me just to discover it wasn’t for them. I suppose Amiee is one of them. At one point she had a blog and her name was out there on a variety of articles related to travel and outdoor adventure, particularly in her home state of Utah. But she, like many of these friends, has once again gotten back on the professional career wagon and, as far as I know, she’s barely written at all in the last few months.

What hasn’t changed over the past two-and-a-half years that I’ve known Amiee is her sense of adventure and desire to get outside. During one long weekend, she and I met up with another writer friend (who is now a dog trainer) for a few days of camping, hiking and exploring in Joshua Tree National Park. It was the first time I’d met Amiee, and we haven’t physically crossed paths since, though we do keep in touch with the occasional email or message.
Read more…

Author name:: JoAnna
Publish date:: May 1st, 2012
Discussion:: No Comments
Categories:: 52 Letters

Thoughts on Letter Writing: Week #17

This weekend I took stock of all the mail that’s poured in over the last month or so, and I feel so loved! I think one of the greatest things about receiving handwritten letters is that you know someone took the time to think about you. A lot of things feel so rushed these days, so it’s nice to know there’s been a tiny slice of time that went into a piece of snail mail.

I was able to carve out a couple hours to write four letters this weekend—two to old friends and two to people who found me through The 52 Letters Project. People from as far away as Indonesia have found this blog and sent letters, introducing themselves and their own personal obsessions with handwritten notes. I love checking out the fantastic stamps that come plastered across the envelopes. Read more…

Author name:: JoAnna
Publish date:: April 29th, 2012
Discussion:: No Comments
Categories:: News

Writing from the Road: A Postmark Story

Over the course of the next few weeks, I am going to be spending a lot of time traveling. Even as I write this, I am three time zones away from my home. I’ve come prepared for my trip with a couple pieces of stationery and some stamps in the hopes that I’ll have time during a layover or before bed some night to write a couple of notes.

What that means is that some of these letters will be postmarked from places other than Las Vegas. Sometimes when I write letters from the road and then send them from home, I feel like I’m cheating the recipients because they receive a letter that was written somewhere a bit different but then carried all the way back to my home just to be dropped in the mail. I admit that I rarely check the postmark of an envelope unless it’s something that immediately stands out to me, and yet I feel a bit weird writing while I travel and then mailing when I get home.

It’s got me wondering: Do you notice postmarks?

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Author name:: JoAnna
Publish date:: April 26th, 2012
Discussion:: 4 Comments
Categories:: News