If I’m going to be talking about slowness on this site, I will have to start with one of my favourite slow things of all time: postcards.

I love postcards.

I love sending them. I love receiving them. I love that they take so long to get where they are going that you forget you sent them in the first place. I love that they were there with the writer, that they made a journey to get to the reader, and that they show signs of adventures they can never tell anyone about. I just love them.

I also love that everything about the postcard process is slow.

I deliberate endlessly over cards, making sure to get one that I think the person receiving it will appreciate. I take some time to think about that person, what they find interesting, what they enjoy doing, and of the stories or experiences from my trip that would appeal most to them. I write deliberately and use up every inch of the card (often forgetting room for stamps and addresses). And I always send a little wish when I drop it into the post box that it survives the journey (mostly intact) and gets there eventually, even though I know it can sometimes take months to arrive.

A Postcard a Day

When I was travelling in Southeast Asia a couple of years ago, I decided to take on a postcard project – one postcard a day, every day, for 30 days. Because I like the idea that the card was actually there with the person writing it (that it smells all the smells, sees all the sights and hears all the sounds around it while it is being written on), I thought of taking a photo of the card in the place I wrote it, so that, along with the card and my message, the recipient could get a little taste of the experience it went through as well.

Here’s what some of them looked like: Continue reading →