Tag: letter month

Free & Fine

On By BekkiIn Musings & Ramblings1 Comment

I’ve more or less gotten to the point where time zone shifts don’t bother me.  Another week, another city. I tell myself where and when I am and hold to it. Flying to the East Coast and back every few weeks isn’t crazy; it’s what I do.

It didn’t occur to me until after the fact that I might have hit my limit last week.

***

I planned to go to New York the week of the 10th for some much needed face time with my team. Passover was on Monday, though, which meant I’d fly in Tuesday and leave Saturday. Easy.

The day after I bought my ticket, plans changed – I had to be in Dallas on Wednesday the 12th for an all day meeting.  Less easy, but manageable. I changed flights around, flying into Dallas Tuesday and New York Wednesday evening.

Friday of that week, plans changed again – I now had to be in DC for a meeting on Wednesday the 19th. Any other weekend I’d have stayed on the East Coast. Easter and Christmas are the two holidays that firmly belong to my psuedo-sister, though, and while she’d have forgiven me if I missed it, I wouldn’t have. So I changed my Saturday evening flight home to a morning flight (to maximize Z time over the weekend) and booked an in-Tuesday out-Wednesday trip to D.C.

Monday the 17th, our Wednesday meeting got moved to afternoon, late enough that I’d miss the last flight out of both National and Dulles Wednesday evening and would have to fly home Thursday.

***

After a while, pretty much anything acclimates to normal. I expect the last minute travel, the meetings that change times and dates half a dozen times. I never plan on taking the flight home that I booked – I’m almost always catching something earlier or later. So while I was a bit frustrated by the time I got on the plane to D.C., it was mostly because I had very much wanted to come home Wednesday night.

It was when my paralegals emailed me a simple question Thursday afternoon, and I replied that I’d been through four cities and five time zones in the last 10 days and could they PLEASE JUST HANDLE IT WITHOUT ME, that the full force of how insane the prior two weeks had been came crashing down on me.

***

I fell into How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful on the plane ride home from D.C. Headphones on and the album on repeat, wondering how I’d waited so damn long to listen to it. Except that the music always finds me when I need it.  This one wouldn’t have resonated the way it does now if I’d listened to it when it came out two years ago. I’m still breathing it in, letting it play over and through me, waiting to get to the point where it’s inked into my memory.

***

Lately, I’ve been trying to make more time for connections.  Looking at where I am in the world and who’s nearby. Reaching out to one or two people in a city rather than doing the blast email trying to see everyone and failing thing. I’m happier for it, seeing and talking to the people I want to spend time with.

February is Letter Month, and I always mean to do it then never do. Too much time on planes, on hikes with Z, juggling bedtime and dishes and laundry and the jungle-that-is-our-yard. I miss it, though, miss the quiet silence of ink and paper, miss the tangled rush of thoughts into sentences. I miss the summer my best friend and I spent writing to each other, miss the long notes I used to write, the ones that rambled and meandered.

So. If you’d like a letter, let me know in the comments or by text or whatever.

The Month That Very Nearly Wasn’t

On By BekkiIn Musings & RamblingsLeave a comment

February is starting to feel like a lost month.

It started off with such promise.  February is letter month, of course, and it was going to be the month that I finished my application to a writing workshop that’s taking place this summer.  I had thoughts that I might try and write a story to submit to Glitter and Mayhem.  Not to mention getting a renter in upstairs and starting work on the basement.

Thus far, the only thing I’ve managed to do is log a ridiculous number of hours at work.  I’m going to get the application finished.  Partly because it has a hard deadline of March 1.  Mostly because dreams take a certain amount of chasing before they can come true.

As for the rest of it, I’m pretty much operating in triage mode.  So if you don’t see me blogging or on Twitter, if you’re waiting for a letter that hasn’t arrived yet…  That’s where I am.  Hunkered down, waiting for the storm to blow over and the sun to come out.

 

“enclosed are three wishes”

On By BekkiIn Musings & RamblingsLeave a comment

The thing I love about February – more than the fact that days are growing a little longer, and the air seems a little warmer, and Spring seems to be just around the corner – is that it’s Letter Month.*

I had a splendid time with this last year, reconnecting with all sorts of people I’d fallen out of touch with (or wasn’t as in touch with as I wanted to be).  Including the friend I’d written all those magical letters to one summer.

So, even though I’ve got work and writing and life things pulling me in about five different directions right now, I’m going to do this.  I bought really cute note cards (you’re going to love them) and fairly cute stamps (I was bummed the Poets set was sold out).

Here’s the interactive part.  If you want a letter, email me, or connect with me on Twitter @bekkiwrites, or, if you want to be really mysterious and anonymous, put your address into my Postable address book.

And if you want to drop me a line or two, that would be most delightful.

* Yes, that link is a year old.  Rest assured, though, #lettermo is alive and well on the Twitter.

“It’s cool that you let lovely lily read the letter”

On By BekkiIn Musings & Ramblings4 Comments

The summer I was sixteen, my best friend and I wrote letters to each other.  We used pink pens and glittering ink, decorating the outside of the envelopes with song lyrics.  We made up names for ourselves and everyone around us, a secret, sacred world we could slip into at will.  Lost boys wandered through our pages, disappearing for days on end, sometimes forgotten, sometimes rediscovered, always beautiful.  It was a magical correspondence.  When I read the letters now I am still imbued with a sense of the infinite, even though it is clear from a distance how quickly we were beginning to unravel.

I am not, it seems, the only one who misses writing letters.  Mary Robinette Kowal has issued a challenge:  during the month of February, write one letter every day the post office is open.

I have decided to do this thing.  I will write to the people I have left scattered across the places I have been.  I will write to the people who post addresses and invite mail from perfect strangers.

And, if you wish it, I will write to you.  Send me your address (at my email or via direct message to @thegirlhaswings).  I’ll cast my mind back to the where and the when of how we knew each other, and I’ll put down on paper those things I always thought I should have said to you but never did.  You don’t have to write back, but I do ask, in the spirit of hand-written correspondence, that my letters stay offline.

I don’t want to post my address online, for all the obvious sorts of reasons, but if you’d like to write me a letter, send an email or a tweet.

Questions and such welcomed.