I’m old enough to have written letters before email was available. Even so, the combination of having first gotten a computer at the same time as when school started expecting lots of written work and the ensuing proliferation of computers has meant my typing speed and written thoughts work at comparable speeds.

I am a physically slow writer and haven’t spent enough time doing that to align that pace with the rate thoughts come to mind when writing by hand. I do have friends with whom our email exchanges are like letters in terms of length, thoroughness, and being text-only. At random times I send a reply by postal mail instead of email. Maybe I do this a half dozen times or so per year.

I do write the letter on a computer before writing it out by hand. That’s because of the aforementioned thinking rate-to-writing rate being so far apart. Of course it takes extra time on my end, but I appreciate how I see my thinking differently when re-writing it by hand. And everyone I know enjoys getting a letter (or even a postcard) in the mail. People find pleasure in personal mail showing up, rather than bills and unsolicited stuff, and there’s an ineffable, intimate pleasure in holding and reading the handwriting of someone you know.

There are a number of things like this I periodically do, trying to be a little more analog. Maybe analog is better, I’m not really out to propose or determine that. At the least, these acts bring a pleasant disruption, typically for sender and recipient, just because they’re outside what we’re accustomed to experiencing.