About this blog
There used to be a time when people wrote letters to each other. Long, thoughtful, entertaining, amusing, personal letters. Letters that were part of a reflective conversation between friends. That gave the space to explore the sort of thoughts and feelings that don’t fit easily into the ebb and flow of real time one-to-one or group chatting.
Then sometime in the late 1990s we stopped sending and receiving these letters as everyone began to use email. And then long, thoughtful, personal written communication gradually seemed to die out, to be replace by short, dashed off jottings as one realised that long thoughtful emails would inevitably be ‘processed’ in amongst the 100+ other ones received that day. So that equivalent ‘personal emails’ simply wouldn’t receive the level of attention that would make them worth the while of writing:
There would no longer be the joy of receiving a letter from a friend, feeling its weight, making a cup of tea, then tearing open the envelope and carefully unfolding its pages, settling down comfortably to a space for reading, deciphering, and slowly re-reading, each phrase. Instead there would be a quick scan down the list of emails received, the quick preview of what you want to read, a mental note that there is a long personal email marked ‘to be read later’ – that later that quite possibly will never come.
But why simply bemoan the loss of the past? Instead I wondered if a personal blog, read by friends, might go some way in between these two extremes – to provide a reflective space where I could write about some of the sorts of things I used to write about to my friends. And where my friends would choose to go to this space – separate from the inbox – to read what I had written. And where, in contrast to a letter exchange between two people there would also be the possibility of an multiple-way conversation between different friends that was also somewhere closer to the level and quality of communication that used to happen when we would write, pen on paper, to each other.
So feel free to respond on the blog, if you like. Or, if you don’t like that idea, drop me an email and I promise to make a cup of tea before sitting down to read it 
Jon
jethrotull said
I’ve heard the argument that the rise in email has led to the decline in letters, the glee of an epistle arrivign from an erstwhile compadre. However, I think this is untrue.
Firstly, I would like to say I’m too young to have been a regular letter writer in the age of the pen. Other than the occasional thank you letter, and one or two friends who moved far, far away, I wrote only for school, or solitary scribblings of the typical teenage introvert. However, I don’t think that the level of correspondence feel. If anything, it grew, as people realised the “you’ve got mail” icon allowed them to transcend the paper format.
People are revelling in the fact that their friends the world over are now just a double click away. University friends from far off lands can be communicated with, either through the occasional email, or through the arrival of networking sites. No need for waiting several days to hear the unseasonal climate in Italy is hampering their petunias, or that they wish they could go for on last drink at the dirty scroat and memphis – you can implore your friend to return, for one last pint before parenthood. Indeed, we are closer now than we ever were.
Secondly, did people really delight at the sight of post from old aunty sally? another missive about Uncle Bill’s piles, or how she’s certain those ‘businesss trips’ he’s off on are covers for saucy trips away with her secretary. Now the posts are one liners, far easier to read quickly then dismis.
thirdly, the profound correspondence of yesteryear is I’m, sure, still being carried out, just at a much faster pace. “I have a friend in Minsk…”(see Tom Lehrer and the great lobechevski) would be only seconds away, thanks to the information superhighway. Furthermore, the conjecture of liberals is enhanced by these blogs. before, it was a closed correspondence – two peoples frank exchange of views, but now..
I’ll finish this someother time – its friday arvo and the pub calls..
many thanks Jonboy