Where, oh where...?

Where, oh where have we been?

It has been a busy month in the land of the interwebs. I (Christina) have been slowly working my way through emails and figuring out the next steps on my online journey. Believe it or not, there are two more letters that have not made it to this blog. They were slow in coming and then Marisa got slammed with work and kids and a temperamental scanner. She hopes to post them in a matter of days.

There is something I must confess: the lateness of the letters are not all Canada Post's fault (though the disorder is fully their's to blame.) Once the letters began rolling in late, I gave myself slack in mailing. Each letter was written more-or-less around the exact date, often first as a thought jotted in my 'off-line' paper journal. Every letter was also sent in numerical order, but a handful were delivered to the mailbox days late. The strangest thing about the letters arriving in such a random order is the fact that I delivered all of them to the same two post boxes each a block from our house: one with a pick-up time of 9am and the other, 5pm. I am curious to know if the pick-up times are inaccurate and if days get skipped.

Which brings me to a fun bit of news...

Upon my return to Toronto (we have been in B.C. visiting family for the past few weeks while my husband, Michael, galavants around the world for work,) I will be conducting two interviews. The first will be with my friend Rob, a letter carrier, who is going to give me a tour of a Canada Post facility. The second is with Matt Lovett, an efficiency expert with Canada Post.

Stay tuned for these next month.

What I learned in 31 days off-line

There is something about the immediacy, the therapeutic clickity-clack of the typewriter that allows for a different kind of writing. The kind that spills from the heart rather than the head. The kind that’s intended for a single, known reader than an large, unknown audience.

Stepping off-line for 31 days got my hands moving, disciplined me to write every single day with or without a four-month-old and a two-year-old clambering about my knees.

It was a luxury I could afford, being home with the kids and not bound to online work through an out-of-house job. But it was a sacrifice.

I had to say goodbye to my online comforts, my go-to time fillers, google maps and Safari searches.

It made me feel small. It showed me I am small.

It taught me how to trust, that the world keeps on turning without my words, without my likes and dislikes.

It revealed the beauty of unplanned moments, reminding me that chance encounters beat out an online connection any day.

I learned that the smartphone check-ins I make multiple times a day are not actual time savers but time suckers. That if I, as a mama-of-two, want to engage with new ideas, read books, study, create — then I have to save up all of those two minute, one minute, ten minute windows and bank them for things I really want to do. Like write poetry. Phone my Grandma. Skype my sister. Read a book.

I remembered that my children are watching and practicing every move I make. Word and deed. For better or worse.

I discovered a peace, a quietness of mind, that I had been hungering for.

And I learned that snail mail gets people’s attention.

The CBC covers the Letters from a Luddite project

Nora Young, host of CBC's national technology show: Spark, emailed me a mere two days after posting her a letter. 

Hi Christina,

I got your letter; thank you. Very interesting project. The funny thing
is, at almost the same time, I came across lettermo.com via Twitter. Are
you aware of this project? There must be something in the air that has
people thinking about unplugging and writing about it!

Do you have a few minutes to chat about Letters From a Luddite on
Monday?

Cheers,
Nora

I’m interviewed about the Letters from a Luddite project along with author Mary Robinette Kowal who began the Month of Letters Challenge. My bit leads off the show... Eep. You can give it a listen here. 

Letter #31 - The End of the Fast

Letter #30 - Mind vs Machine

Letter #29 - Implementing Constraints

Letter #26 - Feeling Small

 We are nearing the end of the letters though oddly the end of the month has come and gone.  Christina has returned to her online life and I am still reading her thoughts as they come to my mailbox in little mismatched groups.  Sometimes it is hard to piece it all together, when #26 arrives before #23.  It is not hard to see why Christina worries about this blog... about her carefully crafted thoughts being conveyed to the digital world.  She has lost control and is now relying on a postal system that loses $36 overnight packages (and won't refund you until it arrives at the destination) and takes 17 days (or as little as 3 or 4) to send a tiny piece of paper wrapped in an envelope from Toronto to Vancouver.  Here is a glimpse into her thoughts on feeling small outside of her well-constructed online world.

Letter #25 - Slow

Today was a lazy sick Monday.  I almost didn't check the mail, but eventually I just had to get out into the gorgeous sunshine and go somewhere.  Two letters greeted my in my mailbox - #25 & #26.  I must admit I was surprised to receive two letters in order - what a novelty!  Between napping and tea-drinking I read these letters.  This one resonated with me on this particular day where I felt I had done nothing, wasted my holiday, all because of some virus.  I was annoyed and had wanted to bring the kids on a great adventure, study for a few hours, clean and make a nice dinner.  Instead I cuddled two little boys, read stories, and napped with them.  It was a slow day.  Thank you for reminding me that slow has a place in our hectic world.

Letter #21 - Time as Sacred

plus... Christina tucked in a polaroid of me painting at her 30th birthday party

Letter #23 - Fully Alive: Choosing active life over passive hobbies

 

Letter #16 - Dream

Letter # 17 - How the fast is going (envelope eaten by baby Oliver...)

Letter #20 - A blue-grey kind of day.

A lot of blank space here... gives you time to think about all the things we miss that we can't fit through the wires.

I find myself sometimes staring at the screen wondering what exactly I am looking for here... as if there is something, somewhere on this vast internet, that will somehow fill the void or numb the feeling or enlighten my bored mind.  Maybe if I google the meaning of life or somehow stumble across the perfect most inspiring blog then suddenly everything will fall into place! 

But really what I need in these moments are all the friends who have moved far away, and who knew me all those years ago when I wasn't a mother or a teacher or a wife.  Sometimes I just need to sit with them and remember when we would sit on the roof and drink tea and look at the stars... or be reminded of when I woke up in the rain, yet in my bed, on one of my first nights as Christina's roomie...  or the time I came home and she was sitting on her bed sobbing amongst a huge pile of clothes on the floor.  I was so astonished to see anything out of place that I didn't know if I should ask her what happened to her CLOTHES or what happened to her, and in the end I don't think I asked anything at all, just sat there and waited for the story to unfold. 

What I really need in these moments isn't an email or even a phone call, I need a jet plane to fly me off to Toronto or Montreal or Calgary or Nashville!  But you know what seems to be the next best thing?  A letter.  A piece of frail paper fed into my Olympia de Luxe, typed out from the heart, and put in the mail where it will be received in 2 days or maybe 17 days... depending on the weather, the distance, and the mood of Canada Post that week.  And when that dear friend gets it in the mail, she might be changing diapers or drowning in laundry or sitting staring at her own screen wondering what she needs... and there will be a glimpse of the past, a note from a faraway friend who misses her dearly and still remembers the little things we did together.

A picture snapped in Halifax on Michael & Christina's honeymoon

Letter #18 - Too wired for their own good?

Are we too wired for our own good?  I won't write much on this either... as the article you just read was fairly lengthy.  I will say that as a mother I worry that my not-yet-three year old son knows how to navigate Youtube and that my one year old wants nothing more but to play with my phone.  As a teacher, I see my students every single day literally stuck to their smart phones.  When they think I'm not looking they sneak a look at facebook or quickly write a text.  If there is a lull in class they immediately plug in their headphones.  They do not want me to do examples with them on the overhead because they just like looking at things on the digital projector... they would rather be passively observing some digitalized version of what I am explaining to them in real words and symbols that they can tangibly see and hear.  It does worry me because I can see that their ability to concentrate has shortened from only a decade or so ago when I was in high school.  It also worries me because they are addicted to the constant information being put out there for them to see.  When I was in high school we had to dial-up to connect to the internet and the noise it made was so loud my parents knew everytime I was going online.  They got an internet bill each month saying how many hours had been used, and if we went over I had some answers to give.  Plus, even though we were connected to social sites like MSN Messanger and ICQ, our access was limited by the sheer physicality of accessing a computer.  So even if we were addicted we had to limited our screen time because we simply could not spend all day sitting at our computers.  Today's kids face a different world... one which we will have to learn to navigate sooner or later!