A quick swing through this blog-site or just a brief glance at my gravatar (what a stupid word) to the right will clue you into a fact: I like old, low-tech things. As an old, low-tech thing myself, I feel an affinity with the slower pace, the more thoughtful process they require. A clock requires winding. A pen requires filling. A letter requires consideration and preparation.
Letters…I know. How 19th century! But I write letters. I have always written letters. I communicated with distant cousins with letters. I wooed women with letters. I have built friendships with letters. To this day, I write letters to pen pals, to my father, and on occasion, to my wife. Letters take time. Letters make me slow down. Letters make me think about what I want to say before I put pen to paper, because you can’t backspace through a handwritten letter or cut-and-paste your way out of an awkward syntax.
In our world of instant communication—IMs, emails, tweets—even a phone conversation can seem old-fashioned. To set aside ten minutes or an hour for a chat is just too much effort for some people. Why? Why is it so much work (or too much bother) to plan some time with a friend or relative? How superficial do our relationships become when we reduce our interaction to 140-character bursts? (more…)
Well, that two week’s vacation went by in a blitz. It was very productive, with the last two books of the Fallen Cloud Saga hitting the streets, but boy, could I have used another week…or month.
