Notes to Self, Birthday 2020 Edition
In preparation for a collaborative project with a friend involving letters, I started thinking about the beginnings of my love affair with the handwritten letter and the format of letters in general.
It started in college when a then-little chain called Paper Source opened up on Nassau Street and was advertising its classes for making handmade cards. Feeling stressed out in my sophomore year, I stepped off campus for a study break and signed up for the class. 90 minutes later, I had 5 unique and beautiful homemade cards to show for it (a few of the original 5 pictured directly below).
Some of the first pieces of stationary I ever made.
After that, I started buying fine paper, making my own stationary (even selling a few sets of the stuff), and writing letters, with a strong preference to the handwritten kind, which have the unfortunate limitation of being un-scalable.
The more letters I wrote, the more I noticed that while I was writing a lot of letters to others, I wasn’t getting a ton of letters back. I also noticed that I was writing similar kinds of things to all the different people on my “letter list.”
This led to starting my blog, which, 8 years later, I continue to see as the open letter to friends and strangers who want to know what’s going on in my life. You’re reading it now!
There’s a lot of writing I do for others (personal cards) or put out there for others to consume (blog posts and life updates). But there’s a whole lot of writing I do for myself (journaling) and to my self (letters)! Every time I go to a nice paper store, I’ll often pick out a card as a special note to self for some occasion or milestone in the future. These notes to self (mosaic-ed below) have historically been:
-Valentine’s Day Cards
-Holiday Cards
-Graduation Cards
-Work Anniversary Cards
-And, the longest-held tradition, Birthday Cards
As it’s my birthday this week, I get to open the card I wrote to myself this time, last year. Here’s what I had to say to myself one year in the future on my 30th birthday.
