My thoughts about InCoWriMo

This is not a well-known phenomenon at all, but I stumbled upon the hashtag #incowrimo on Mastodon somewhere in January.

Intrigued, I looked into what it was, and it stands for International Correspondence Writing Month. It happens in February, and the idea is that you mail a handwritten letter or postcard to someone.

This sounded so cool to me! I vividly remember this from my childhood: exchanging addresses with other kids I befriended during summer holidays on campings in France. We'd write each other letters for a couple of months at least, before it inevitably slowly fizzled out.

Back to the present, I couldn't remember when I had last received a handwritten letter from someone. Ah, nostalgia.

In typical Maaike fashion, I got overly enthusiastic about the idea and asked people on Mastodon if they wanted to receive a handwritten letter from me. In the end, I had to write 8 letters in total. That was quite a bit of work, let me tell ya!

I'm happy I participated, but I don't think I'd do it again in its current form because of one sad fact: you cannot trust postal services any more.

When I sent out my Christmas cards last year, I know for a fact that at least 2 people didn't receive theirs. This made me very mad at the Dutch postal services. I had crafted curated messages on those cards to brighten up their day, and this effort was lost. A friend in Denmark received her card somewhere in January, almost 6 weeks after I had posted it!

For InCoWriMo, I have no way of knowing whether the 8 letters I sent have all been received.

So far, I have received 3 letters back, and I don't know if I should expect more. I also know that one package (with UK candy) got lost in transit, as the sender asked me if I'd already received it (I still haven't).

My proposed "solution" for this conundrum is this: I'd still write the handwritten letter, but then I'd make a scan of it and e-mail it to the receiving party. It just sucks to not being able to rely on postal services, but here we are.

It was a magical feeling to see an envelope, with my name on it, in my mailbox. And not once, but thrice! That magical feeling will be lost with my "solution".

But I'd prefer if the message actually gets delivered. Sigh....I don't know. What do you think?