Winner, Week 1

Congratulations to "chewytulip," an artist and etsy shop proprietor who is the first randomly chosen winner after leaving a lovely comment in response to last week's Letter Jar Challenge:

I used to make postcards regularly and send them to my grandfather. The cards would be bright, colorful,and weird. He didn't ever say much, but he displayed them all on his coffee table. :)


What a wonderful memory! Indeed, displaying your postcards "said" more than words could convey.

Thanks also to LisavVi and Karen for your comments. I appreciate your interest in The Letter Jar project!

As for me, I've been sick enough that rest has taken priority over writing, so no letter to report this week. However, I certainly wasn't going to let Wednesday pass without picking my first winner and issuing a new Midweek Motivation (that makes two letters for me this week):

I've pulled from the The Letter Jar the name of  S, whom I met while training for a half-marathon six years ago. I'm friends with S on Facebook, but have never really expressed how much her companionship during those training runs meant to me. Of course we cheered each other on, but we also just talked (being able to keep up somewhat of a conversation, of course, being a way to keep overexertion in check). And what I ended up talking about with S was my dissolving marriage -- I wasn't ready to talk to the friends and family who had attended my wedding, but this new, neutral friend was a sounding board and confidante whom I'm never forgotten. I look forward to thanking S for all she did for me, more than I'm sure she ever knew, just by listening.

Do you know someone who seemed to appear in your life just when you needed him or her, someone you've been meaning to thank for their help, their friendship, their contribution?

THIS WEEK'S PRIZE comes courtesy of chewytulip's etsy shop full of fun, original postcards and lettersets, as well as animal magnets, paintings, scarves and a line of pickle-themed schwag. I'll be ordering a set of owl notecards for myself, and this week's winner will also be treated to a set of chewytulip notecards that strike his or her fancy.

Write on!

Lucky

I always heard as a child -- and slowly have come to believe as an adult -- that everything happens for a reason.

It would seem the Letter Jar and the responses it  attracts are no exception.

Recently I wrote to my friend M, a graphic designer whom I met while working at a community college in New Mexico. I told her how much I admire not only her creativity but also her openness, inquisitiveness and energy.

You approach life with the attitude that there is always something new to learn, always a way to expand your horizons and your understanding. That kind of living is unique and refreshing and something I aspire to ... you're not afraid to test your own limits and I think that's very, very awesome.

I should have known that news of M's latest exploits -- which she recounted briefly in an e-mail after receiving my letter -- would serve as a well-timed, much needed boost when I was weary in the pursuit of my own passions. Turns out M recently quit her job as a designer and is one month away from a degree in massage therapy, an achievement she'll follow by moving to Idaho to train as a Kung Fu instructor. Ultimately she'll move back to New Mexico to open a studio where she'll offer -- you guessed it -- massage therapy and Kung Fu lessons.

I decided sometime at the beginning of last year that I needed to change something in my life. I was feeling very unhappy at [the community college] and it was more because I needed a change ... I'll do massage therapy during the day and Kung Fu at night. Sounds dreamy! Doesn't it?

Were it anyone else, the whole dream might seem odd. But I know M and I know that one day I'll be visiting her highly successful studio -- when she sets her mind to something, she doesn't let up. I call her unique brand of ambition "ferocity and focus."

And what do I call the fact that her e-mail showed up on a day when my own confidence was sagging, when I needed inspiration to stay true to my own odd -- but just as beloved -- dream of the Letter Jar project and accompanying book?

I call that luck. Or, as my Jewish friend A would say, "bashert." I wrote about my good fortune of sharing dinner with him when he traveled to Chicago from Albuquerque for a conference last year, just days after he received my letter. That night we marveled at how I just happened to write when I did -- we hadn't talked in several years. "It's Bashert, he said. "It's a Yiddish word and there's no exact translation in English, though fate comes close."

Truly. Call it bashert, or fate, or even just plain old luck -- responses to The Letter Jar seem to consistently bring me the right words at the right time. I can only hope that's true for some of the letters I send, as well.

MAIL FROM A FELLOW MAILER: I guess I ought to have expected that respondents to a blog about letter-writing would be an eclectic bunch. One such reader is Sheryl at changeofaddress.org, a website whose name kind of says it all. Sheryl e-mailed to let me know about her new blog post, "10 Reasons Why Mail Can Be Late." Wondering why that letter bound for Phoenix took a detour through Fayetteville? Read on. And thanks Sheryl for visiting The Letter Jar!

Learning to Fly

So I started out
For God knows where
I guess I'll know
When I get there.

~Tom Petty, "Learning to Fly"


If The Letter Jar project had a soundtrack, that song would probably be the opening cut.

Those words have always spoken to me, someone who isn't afraid to embrace the gypsy side of her nature. I can appreciate the idea of life being one big surprising journey--I may not know where I'm ultimately going to end up, but I'm certainly enjoying the sites I have the good fortune to happen upon.

And enjoying as well, the people I'm lucky enough to meet along the way.

Tonight I wrote to my former coworker P and her partner M. I worked with P at a community college in Albuquerque, where I moved with my first husband a decade ago.

P and M, as I told them in my letter, are some of the most genuine, authentic, unpretentious people you will ever meet. They both have such a way of putting you at ease, you feel like an old friend almost immediately. We rarely correspond anymore, but I nonetheless recalled warm memories the very moment I pulled their names from The Letter Jar.

Writing to them, I was struck once again by the seeming randomness--that indeed is likely much less random than I think--that rules the events in my life and the people those events bring me to. My ex-husband and I, Midwesterners when we met, vacationed in the southwest and decided to relocate. That decision gave me the opportunity to meet not only P (and through her, M) but also a whole host of other fascinating, funny, caring people I'm lucky to count among my friends. These are people I've been challenged by, learned from, laughed with and cried on. My life story wouldn't be same without them.

I appreciate the reminder of life's surprises, as I now find myself not moving physically, but nonetheless moving, into another phase in my life as a new mother. I've begun to notice as I write my letters that I am feeling grateful for the relationships I have formed over my lifetime--as a high school and college student, entry-level journalist, career changer, thirtysomething newlywed stepmother--and I'm yearning to form new ones.

The prospect seems daunting--making new friends at this stage in life feels at least different, if not more challenging, than back in college when I was rooming with a dorm full of fellow students and going to classes in big lecture halls each day--until I remember how I've made so many of the important connections in my life. I simply need to keep my mind open to life's unpredictable journey and my heart open to the people I meet along the way.

YOU MUST READ THIS: I'm so glad to have received an inquiry the other day from Felix Jung of the absolutely mesmerizing blog Dead Advice. He asked if I might be willing share a link to his work. You bet.

"Imagine, for a moment, that you have just died," Dead Advice challenges you on its front page. "If you had to look back over the arc of your life as it stands today, what stories would you tell? What lessons would you share, what things might you regret or confess?"

Take some time, read some letters. I suggest starting with Felix's own, A Small List of Big Things, which is poignant and funny, brilliant really. Then think about your letter ... a fascinating prospect, no?

Short-lived Yet Long-lasting

This morning I wrote a letter to S, once the roommate of my husband R--long before R was my husband, even before he was much of a serious boyfriend.

S and I didn't really know each other all that well back then, and still don't. But that didn't matter when I added his name to THE LETTER JAR.

What mattered was that S came through for me in a most unexpected, but truly appreciated, way that I've never forgotten:

I remember going to the room you shared with R, trying to find him because he had told me he would meet me somewhere, but didn't show. R wasn't there, but you were. Now you didn't even have to open the door, much less invite me in and talk to me. But you did, and you very kindly told me that perhaps being involved with R at that point wasn't a good idea.

Now this many years on it probably seems comical--you do not want to date my roommate, seriously!--but in fact it was an incredibly sensitive way you handled it, at the time.

My interaction with S lasted about 15 minutes and happened about 18 years ago. But given we were all in college back then, with so much personal stuff to preoccupy each one of us, it still strikes me that S took a moment to talk to essentially a random girl about her unrequited crush.

Most people in your shoes would have informed me R wasn't there and sent me on my way. That you cared enough to have a conversation sticks with me to this day.

Which has become the point of this project, honestly ... people and the interactions we have with them, long-term or for the briefest of moments, are what are lasting and remembered.

As I noted to S--and he already knew--R and I did reunite many, many years post-college and are actually the quite happy new mom and dad to a 7-month-old and stepmom and dad to a 7-year-old.

While maybe the 20-year-old R wasn't someone I ought to have been involved with, his 38-year-old counterpart is truly a blessing in my life--strong, supportive, sensitive and more loving that I feel I deserve sometimes.

My letter was to S was number 98, and among those first 97 were some pretty long, fairly wide-ranging missives to people I've known most of my life, telling them all the ways I've admired and learned from them. It was refreshing to write a letter with such a singular purpose--to thank the recipient for simply being there at one moment in time. Our interaction was short-lived but its impact was long-lasting.

PACKAGE TRACKING WASN'T AN OPTION: Yesterday I heard an entertaining NPR interview with Jay and Les, who are among the riders reenacting the 150-year-old Pony Express. Who knows how this project might be evolving if a letter took 10 days to get from Missouri to California?

Wisdom ... Without Warning

Today I wrote a short letter to R, a coworker from our information services department with whom I typically exchange "hellos" as we pass in the hallway. (I have to say that in some ways I'm glad our longer conversations--incidental as they are to my computer going on the fritz--have been infrequent.)

It was a surprise then, that some of my most cherished wisdom from my first few weeks of motherhood came from none other than R. He is a Facebook friend of mine, and like so many others weighed in with congratulations soon after my son was born. So many times I reread and repeated to myself R's message:

Congrats ... take it easy ... enjoy the moments of quiet and remember you are doing everything right ...

"Remember you are doing everything right." As I told R in my letter to him, those words--read in a hormonal and sleep-deprived funk--affected me profoundly. What new mother doesn't second-guess herself through those early days? "Remember you are doing everything right." Oh how those words calmed me when I could feel the icy grip of anxiety closing in time and again.

Just goes to show, I guess, that wisdom--like the proverbial closest emergency exit on the plane--isn't always in the first place you'd look. (Something to remember, perhaps, when you're desperately seeking an answer and you're just convinced you're looking in all the right places?) When you do find it, it's worth acknowledging.

NEXT READ: My mom has me excited about Lee Kravitz's new book, Unfinished Business: One Man's Extraordinary Year of Trying to Do the Right Things. The summary goes something like this: Kravitz, fired from his job as editor of Parade magazine, chronicles how he launched a journey--around the world and around the corner--to make amends with the people and pieces of his life from which he had become disconnected. Sounds intriguing, and inspiring.