Acoustic mail

A few weeks ago, I wrote a letter to my bestie from high school. Wrote as in wrote by hand. Then I put it into an envelope, sealed it, put a stamp on it, and walked to a nearby postal outlet to turn it over to Canada Post for delivery.

All that is becoming pretty odd anymore, and sometimes disquieting.

I've become so accustomed to writing emails that save a copy of what I wrote. There's no copy of what I wrote to my friend. I have a general idea now of what I wrote about, but I couldn't tell you details. There's a risk in any writing, but a handwritten note is a bigger risk than most. It's very much of the moment.

When I write with a keyboard and computer, I edit constantly. I rarely just pour out a bunch of words without checking to make sure they make sense and say what I want to say, rewording here, tweaking there, cutting and moving and deleting. Handwriting, unless you're copying from something, goes from brain to paper. You have to get it right the first time unless you want to blot things out or even start over. You have to think linearly and even slowly enough to capture your thoughts in ink.

Once I've finished an email and clicked "send," Gmail gives me a maximum of 30 seconds to have second thoughts and recall the message. A letter popped into the post has no possibility of recall. Many a comedy sketch has been based on that fact.

Emails are "free" to send — I pay only with all the information Google extracts out of me every time I use it. Nothing is really free. The letter I sent to the United States cost me C$1.30. If what I'm sending is special, I consider that a bargain. It's not hard to be more special than an email.

The letter took several days to reach my friend. I don't know how long, because I didn't pay for tracking. An email message, on the other hand, after that 30-second grace period, is in the recipient's inbox within seconds, on their mail server if not yet viewed on their own computer or phone.

It had been a long time since I'd written anything more than a Christmas card by hand, and I didn't even do very well at that last year. It took a lot of time for me to build up to actually writing that letter. The trepidation was real. But once I was into it, at the right time, it was quite satisfying.

Sending letters is starting to feel like an anachronistic indulgence. I'm having a physical message brought from one coast of one country to the far coast of a different country. It's kind of amazing governments still provide a service like that.

Letters sent in the mail are a really inefficient way to communicate. And yet they can be a deeper, richer way to communicate. Email has its place, but maybe writing more by hand would be good for me. Maybe I should take a risk and be less edited.

I'm doing better at Christmas cards this year. I might just keep surprising people by scrawling notes and popping them in the post.