The Penultimate day

It’s the penultimate day of the Month of Letters Challenge. At this point, you should have sent a minimum of 23 letters. How are you doing?

Personally, I’ve found that sending letters every day has become habit forming. Will I send them every day from here on out? Probably not daily, because life does happen. My husband and I are moving in April, for instance. But given how comforting I’ve found it to sit down with pen and paper, I can’t imagine that I’ll miss many days.

I’ve seen a lot of people online saying that they wished this challenge ran all year long. You know what? There’s something called 52 Weeks of Mail, which challenges you to send at least one piece of mail per week. You guys have that down pat.

And you? As we sit here with one day left in the challenge, what habits have you developed?

12 thoughts on “The Penultimate day”

  1. UGH! I’ve fallen off the mailing wagon 🙁 BUT, I was ahead at one point, so I’m not terribly far behind and I’m looking at tomorrow-Leap Day- as an extra day in my month (& year) and I WILL send out the rest of my month’s mail with a Leap Day postmark 🙂 This month has been really fun and I know I will continue writing (as I’ve always been a writer). Thanks, Mary!

  2. I have sent enough letters (If cards count) but I seem to do it in batches of 3 or 4, then take a day or two off. It has been fun because I have also written to relatives far away who I don’t often see or correspond with. I will try to send one last barrage of letters and cards tonight and tomorrow. It might be fun to save a card with a leap year day postmark! Thanks for putting a fire under us all to return to the pen and paper.

  3. I’ve met a lot of good friends already and written lots of letters – my mailbox is happy because she gets to meet new correspondents – this has been a win-win-win!

  4. I certainly will continue to write letters. Not daily, but regularly.

    The best part of this entire endeavour was finding a new penpal in England. She and I have corresponded a few times this month and I just love the excitement of finding a letter waiting for me in the mail box.

  5. This has been an inspiring and fun month for me. I will continue to send postcards and letters throughout the year in hopes of getting someone who feels its a chore to write to actually do so.

    This afternoon I went to the post office to have some postcards hand canceled and the extremely wonderful clerk asked me where do you find postcards locally? I’ll admit I was astounded, she explained that a customer had come in the other day asking where to buy them. Recently I found on the interent that the USPS handled approximately 3 billion postcards in 2011. Now that is a lot of postcards. For all you postcrossers out there one of the things I love about it besides the postcards are the statistics they have on the website. Really fascinating!

    Enjoy your day!

  6. I have been really energized by this. I worked with the goal of mailing my cards each day, rather than catching up. I had 3 lapses – one when I was sick, one when I came back from a trip (where I was able to keep it going) and just spaced, and one where I accidentally left the written/addressed/stamped postcard on the table when I left for work in the morning. If I’d just thought of it as sending 24 items somtime during the month I’d be really scrambling now, because I’m a procrastinator.

    I’m planning to continue, but may scale back to, say, at least one thing sent per week. There were a couple of days where I wasn’t motivated and I feel my recipients got a little ripped off, so hopefully a weekly deadline will give me the space to be consistently creative, but also a deadline to make me really do it. I do hope to do this month-long challenge again, though, as the daily challenge does create/reinforce the habit of writing SOMETHING.

    Thanks again for starting this!

  7. I have missed the last few mail days, as “life” decided to interfere, but I still have all the addresses sitting next to my pen and paper, and even though the month is over, my motivation to write isn’t, so I will just continue. If people reply, so much the better!

  8. Alas I must admit I did not meet my goal, BUT seeing how I didn’t hear about the challenge until mid Feb. when your interview aired on CBC Mary, I have made a pretty good dent in getting 15 sent and I still have tomorrow and I found some postcards of my nearest little town, Stony Plain the Town with the Painted Past (murals painted all over the town) so here goes! I too plan on continuning with posting something in the mail at least a couple of times a week. I have rediscovered that letter writing is good for the soul. Thanks for getting us going Mary!

  9. I loved it! I sent anywhere from one to three pieces of mail a day, everything from postcards to letters to small care packages containing handmade goodies. I really enjoyed taking time to sit down with paper and pen and think about the person I was writing to. I also enjoyed shopping for fun cards and postcards. Another bonus: finding letters and postcards in my mailbox instead of just bills and catalogs!

    I don’t think I will continue daily letter writing, but will try for at least once a week.

    Thank you for this project! It made dreary February a much happier month.

  10. I love this challenge and I didn’t have any problem to send something everyday during the month, but since I’m in postcrossing it was very easy, but I also got a lot of new letters from postcrossing friends sending something else than a card, for exemple jtilly send me a large letter with lots of nice stuff of Day of the Dead.

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