The thing about a milestone is that it’s transitory. You reach it and then bypass it immediately. It’s not a cenotaph but a marker of distance. It requires no ritual of recognition. Take a picture. Move on down the road. As far as real letters go, I was raised with them, but it’s been years since I wrote a personal letter. I wrote letters to my father when he was away on business, and letters home when I was at summer camp. I wrote a few to friends when I was at college, well before the advent of email. I certainly wrote letters of love, and heartbreak. Sometimes I wrote a letter to myself and shoved it in a drawer, a time capsule to myself. But it’s been over a decade since the last one. I’ve become accustomed to the directness of email and the intimacy of online messaging, so the effort that consumes one in crafting a real letter seems unreasonable. Yet I can honestly say that learning to speak my mind for a public forum where people are actually reading my thoughts over and over again, has proved less daunting and more inspiring.
Letter - December 5, 2021
Letter - December 5, 2021
Letter - December 5, 2021
The thing about a milestone is that it’s transitory. You reach it and then bypass it immediately. It’s not a cenotaph but a marker of distance. It requires no ritual of recognition. Take a picture. Move on down the road. As far as real letters go, I was raised with them, but it’s been years since I wrote a personal letter. I wrote letters to my father when he was away on business, and letters home when I was at summer camp. I wrote a few to friends when I was at college, well before the advent of email. I certainly wrote letters of love, and heartbreak. Sometimes I wrote a letter to myself and shoved it in a drawer, a time capsule to myself. But it’s been over a decade since the last one. I’ve become accustomed to the directness of email and the intimacy of online messaging, so the effort that consumes one in crafting a real letter seems unreasonable. Yet I can honestly say that learning to speak my mind for a public forum where people are actually reading my thoughts over and over again, has proved less daunting and more inspiring.