Today is Blog Action Day. Yes, yes it is. This is Yoda’s little drop in the bucket. Yes yes it is. I think I’m beginning to sound a bit like Matt Pond when I write– yes, yes I am.

My little attempt to help green our planet, I suggest that everybody try taking a little vacation from their cars, and put some public transportation or muscle mass (aka ride a bicycle!) to use. If you need help or information on how, or why, try visiting the Transportation Alternatives site. Not only will you feel better, but the world will feel better. Which, you know, means that in the long run, we’ll all feel better! And feeling better is good.

Fellow blogger Anja Merret has some interesting things to say. What strikes me in particular is her vow to attempt a more “paperless” office. As someone who spends a large amount of time in an office environment each week, it amazes me the amount of paper saved by this little thing called email. If we all made a concentrated effort to print only what we needed to, to recycle scratch paper, and to make use of digital recordings (ie using highrise to take messages, or using basecamp instead of interoffice memos) we could probably save millions of trees. That’s a lot of air– so we can continue to take deep breathes and calm ourselves down, from all the stresses of life.

On a run to the post office last week, I happened across an old mail delivery bike in the lobby. It made me smile, because A) well, it’s a bicycle and if you’ve read any of the other posts on this blog, one thing we love is bicycles, and B) people probably used to get pretty excited waiting for mail to be brought on those two wheels. In an era pre cell phone pre email pre loss of actual life lived (replaced by digital friends, digital memories, digital life) handwritten letters were a way to reach out.

For our generation, a pile of mail is hardly anything to get excited about. If your piles look anything at all like mine, your mail consists of a bunch of bills (gross), some take out menus, the free neighborhood newspaper/newsletter you rarely read, junk mail, and sometimes wrongly addressed bits and pieces. This makes me frown. When I first realized this sometime last year, I decided to take it upon myself to begin a letter writing campaign, an effort to reach out to those whom I care and think about and felt deserved a little bit of my attention and time. Certainly more time than it takes to blast out a quick email. And then, maybe their little dismal piles of mail will begin to be not so dismal, when they see an envelope made out to them in my chicken scratch, and open it to find page upon page of barely legible (but loving!) handwriting.

I guess I got too caught up in the big idea of making other people smile to realize that nobody would take the time to write back, and that one sided letter conversations can only be so fun. So I slacked off. But seeing that bike made me want to bring smiles to faces and rays of light to mailboxes across the country again. So I have reinstated my letter writing campaign. Unfortunately my move to NYC has taken away about half the people I used to write to as I see them on a nearly daily basis now. So this is my announcement- if you’re sick of nothing but bills and junk, and would like a little handwritten sunshine straight from my little heart, leave a comment with your mailing address, and wait with baited breath.

I’m sick of emails and texts and instant gratification. I want old school courtship- long rambling letters you wait for days upon weeks to receive. And maybe if I write enough of them, someday someone will write back…