Writing a letter is not as easy as it seems. When I first heard this assignment I expected it to take me about 10-15 minutes to write the letter, but it ended up taking just 15 minutes to figure out how to start the letter. I wrote a letter to my best friend that is going to school in Alabama. Whenever we are together we can never stop talking, but I was surprised at how awkward I felt while writing the letter even though I was writing to one of my best friends. Staring at the blank sheet of paper as the minutes passed by, I had no idea what to write. I felt like I was overthinking everything that I wrote because it felt more permanent when I wrote it by hand. Once I started writing, I sort of felt like I was either talking to myself or overpowering the conversation because there was no response from the other side. I have been so used to sending or saying short messages to people through texts, emails, or phone calls and then immediately receiving a response. Even though I had so much to say and to tell my friend, I just did not know how to put it into words for the letter. Finally, I just decided that I was overthinking myself too much and wrote down everything that I was thinking. Once I finished the letter, I realized that I have no idea what my friend’s address is at school. Sure, we did just move to new addresses for school, but it’s weird to think how we can be best friends with someone yet not know something as basic as their address. I can’t imagine what my friend’s response is going to be when she receives my letter because the only time we really get letters in the mail these days are for “thank you” letters. I definitely underestimated how hard it would be to write a letter.
One thought on “Blog 2: Letter”
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Even though human beings have been writing for a few thousand years, the whole thing *is* weird and awkward—especially when you can’t get quick feedback from your reader. I’m sorry it was a tougher-than-expected exercise, but that difficulty too is a real potential of letter-writing as a medium.