In a time when Zoom calls and texts can be emotionally draining, mailing someone a handwritten letter is often personally enriching, according to a New York Times opinion piece published this week.
Jordan Salama, a travel journalist who penned the essay, describes picking up a letter-writing habit as a way to help him cope during the coronavirus pandemic.
“I’ve found writing letters to be wonderful in the simplest of ways,” he writes. “For each one, I sit at our dining room table for the better part of an hour, away from my phone and computer, with only a sheet or two of blank white printer paper in front of me. I’m hardly able to keep a regular journal without it feeling like a chore, but writing to someone else is sending a fresh entry off into the world without ever having to look at it again.”
Salama notes that other people have turned to letter writing during the pandemic, pointing to a Postal Service survey in May that found younger people are more likely to want to mail cards and letters during this time.
The writer — whose book on his travels in Colombia, “Every Day the River Changes,” is due to be published next year — also signals his support for more federal funding for USPS, which he calls “one of our nation’s oldest and most cherished institutions.”
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