Today I wrote and posted a letter to my nephews. I had some time to kill whilst on a road trip. I’m pretty sure they aren’t reading this, so I am not spoiling the surprise in talking about it. Remember the pure joy when you got a letter in the mailbox? I remember as a kid there was a book called ‘Free Stuff For Kids’ and it was just that – a list of things you could send away for to get posted back to you. By the time it arrived you had forgotten what you sent for so it was always a surprise!

I have sent letters to my nephews in the past when I was living overseas or in the Northern Territory but they usually accompanied birthdays and I haven’t for a while. I am excited to be able to surprise them with this letter for no reason.

I can’t remember the last time I received a letter in the post for no reason. When I was a kid my best friend moved away so we became pen pals for a while – but that faded with time. Funnily enough I found her again on Facebook in the last couple of years, but we only briefly messaged.

In high school my friends and I used to write letters to each other all the time. We used to swap them at school. I still have some and they are hilarious to look back on. I think they will stay in a treasure box to show my kids one day – I can imagine their horror! I think I may even be lucky enough to have kept one where we talked about my partner. He went to school with us and we all had crushes at different times so I am sure we wrote about it.

The spam emails have taken over as the nice ‘feel good’ letters to send to friends. Again, which seems to be the resounding theme I am discovering – it is convenient to quickly send to nice flower email to friends or to circulate the joke emails. I remember when this first started and it was great – I even saved some of them thinking they were one offs! With all the spam that gets shoved into our box everyday we have become overloaded with all the junk. I got to a stage where I just deleted anything that looked like jokes or chain mail. Sure it was funny, entertaining, nice – whatever the case, but I was saturated. Are these spam emails actually making us less connected to our friends and family?