pen pals

I've always loved writing letters, from the actual act of writing to picking out new stationary and pens to developing relationships in one of the oldest ways.

When I was a junior in college I was paired with a pen pal who was going to school in Minnesota. We've been writing letters back and forth ever since (4 years and a collective 6 changes of address now) and it's proved to be a really amazing way to get to know someone else my age.

I've used the internet for the majority of my life and developed many of my relationships, or at least got to know people mainly through Myspace, Facebook, AIM back in the day and texting. In order to build our relationship through the mail we had to establish boundaries and guidelines for how we'd interact with each other. It's one thing to ping back and forth thousands of times in the beginnings of a new friendship or relationship without much regard for offending or having to back-track because within seconds of sending a message another containing "JK" or "So sorry!" or whatever can be sent, reversing what has been done.

With letters, if you offend someone you're kind of doomed. If you say something or mention something in your life that your pen pal doesn't agree with you might end that relationship for good. Whenever there was a longer than average gap in our correspondence I always wondered if I had said something that annoyed or weirded out my pen pal. But each time she responded with "oh my gosh that happened to me!" or "no worries!" and I liked her more and more. Now nothing is off limits in our lives. We're both highly open people and our lives have intertwined so much over the last 4 years it's been amazing.

Our pen palship has encouraged me to reach out in this way to many of my friends, friends from college, friends from home, my grandparents, etc. It's a fun way to communicate with people instead of simply "liking" their posts on Facebook or texting them once in a while.

Now that I'm trying to launch some sort of side-business as a calligrapher it made sense to try and gain some more practice with one of the most common tasks of a calligrapher — addresses. A few weeks ago I sent over 20 letters, some of them pictured below, to all manner of people to gain some new skills and also send some love to people I care about. It was great, although tiring, and it felt good to send so much mail at once.

Here's to more mail, and supporting the USPS!

♢♢♢

on traveling alone

I don't have very many friends. Or rather, I have a great many friends but not many I can call up and say "hey, want to go to Detroit with me?", which is something I've been thinking about a lot lately.

I've written about my wanderlust before and it's striking again, with a greater vengeance than perhaps ever before. I want to go far, have incredible, life-changing adventures and generally make my day-to-day ho-hum life more bearable.

But! Big but! Do I dare have these adventures by myself?

If I travel alone will I be safe? Will I have the same adventures? Will I be willing to do the same things and go the same places if I'm not with another person?

As I continue into adulthood (just turned 24! Woo!) as a mostly single person I have to decide how to navigate the world as one. Right now it seems fairly daunting to consider buying tickets, planning and executing a trip by myself but I have to get over it, I guess.

So for now I have developed a short list of trips I'd like to take in the near future, hopefully one of these can happen soon:

• Austin
• Detroit
• San Francsico
• Denver
• LA
• NYC
• Chicago
• Berlin

Soon my friends, soon.

so, is orange the new black?

Last weekend I binge watched Orange is the New Black along with all the 22 - 35 year old women I know.

We tweeted, we texted, we Facebook posted without revealing too much stuff.

photo here

Why is this show so great? I mean, I watch a ton of TV, I have multiple multiple shows going at once yet I dropped everything to watch the new season and ended up finishing the 13 episodes by Monday at lunch.

1. Women? In prison? A women's prison? Yeah, you had me at prison. For as long as I can remember I've been fascinated with prison — what was it like? Why were people there? What did people do all day? I used to be obsessed with the show Lockup on MSNBC, spending an entire New Year's Day one year watching it with my hungover roommates. At an all women's prison in the south somewhere the women were shackled to desks and phones and ran the state's tourism bureau and I remember thinking — wait wut. They made probably $0.50/hour to rent vacation condos to my mom. While I realize OITNB isn't spot on with its message or depiction of prison the glimpses it offers don't seem too terribly far-fetched.
2. Women! So many amazing women! Old women! Tall women! Transgender women! All the women! I'm amazed at the cast, with each episode, with each flashback to a new woman before she came to the prison I'm astounded at the breadth of talent they have assembled for this amazing show. It is truly ground-breaking for the cast alone. Even if the show was garbage getting all these women in a room is a feat unto itself.
3. Those back stories. Last season was amazing, don't get me wrong, but the back stories of this season are incredible. From Miss Rosa, to Morello's dark past (didn't see that one coming!), to Poussey I looked forward to going backwards more and more with each story. In the end knowing the circumstances and situations that brought these women to prison really makes the show.

♢♢