cheap thrills: things to do for under $10 (item six)
maybe you're looking for something to do that doesn't involve going somewhere or having people over? then this installment of cheap thrills is for you! with that, i present you:
write a letter!
when i was a little kid my mom would make me and my brothers each write a letter a week during summer breaks from school. we would whine about it... a lot! but by the time i was in my late teens and had friends scattered across the distances, i revived and updated this habit voluntarily. instead of weekly short letters written on lined notebook paper to relatives selected almost at random though, my new take on the letter was that, written spontaneously as opposed to on a schedule, it was a great way to genuinely communicate handpicked events and reflections with people who wanted to know about them to begin with. the best part was that most of my friends liked getting personal mail enough that they wrote back regularly. i think at the height of my personal letter writing craze, i was sending out one or two on a weekly basis.
i don't write so many letters anymore, and the pool of recipients have grown considerably (one unfortunate fact: i didn't consider family members good prospects until maybe three or four years ago). but whenever i do succeed in sitting down with a nice piece of paper and a good pen to compose a message specially tailored to one person, it brings me true joy. and when the letters and postcards show up in my mailbox in return, i am reminded that the time i took to write was well spent.