I’ve always loved the idea of letter-writing. I grew up on a steady diet of Victorian novels, and the women in those books are always spending their mornings writing letters in their morning rooms before receiving callers or taking tea in their gardens. A few of these books even described those well-appointed writing desks, and I would pour over these descriptions and compare the many neatly-labeled pigeon holes, the pens and ink, the blotting paper, the stationery, and the trinkets of those desks with my writing utensils. It was a rather sad comparison.

I still have the same writing set that I did then. It is a green binder, a cast-off of my dad’s from a conference he attended, with one of those dangerous claw-like clips to hold paper, and pockets to hold more paper. I would collect beautiful stationery and store it in this nondescipt binder, and whenever I wanted to write a letter (which wasn’t particularly often because I’m so self-conscious about my horrendous spelling), I’d go find an old yellow pencil or ball-point pen and then scribble with my tortured handwriting while balancing this binder on my knees.

These days, I only pull out my green binder a few times a year. By far, most of my correspondence, such as it is, is in the form of emails and blog posts. And unfortunately, any of my friends can tell you that I’m very, very bad at maintaining a good correspondence even via these relatively painless modes. Even so, I write literally thousands of words every week that gets sent off into the ether, instantly arriving at it’s destination, beautifully spell-checked, and without any cost on my part.

And yet, this weekend I feel like I’ve actually accomplished something because I have a stack of correspondence by the door, stamped, addressed, and ready to be mailed. Granted, most of this stack is made up of bills and taxes, but two are actually letters (and I even have one more letter to write). Real life letters. Letters bearing my almost illegible writing and all my scribblings to obliterate misspelled words, letters that will not arrive instantly and that each cost money to send. But somehow this stack signifies a productive weekend, an accomplishment.

Now if I could just find a house with a morning room and desk… I probably wouldn’t write any more than I do now.