From the Letters Against Isolation project.
- To avoid burnout:
- Take a week off if you wish (everyone needs a vacation!)
- Adjust the number of letters you write… 4 is my magic number now, after struggling to do more before.
- A short note is as good as a long letter (and getting anything at all is way better than nothing!).
- I found that the more letters I did, the more I was unhappy with the look of my writing. So I decided to print my letters with my computer, using some nice hand-printing fonts. And because of that, I found that if I make a 2-column letter template, with the text at the bottom, I can fold it I half sideways (text out), then fold it down, to make a free-standing "card", to which I add some stickers and color doodles.
- The back of my "card" has the LAI name and website so people know the source of the letter.
- I use a single envelope to send the letters (they are bigger card envelopes, left over from some really bad cards I decided I couldn't in good conscience use 😊), which, at least for the amount I'm sending, uses only two stamps. I use "Letters Against Isolation" for the return address name so they know what the envelope is.
- I still struggle with what to write, so it's definitely easier for me to do short cards as opposed to longer letters. This is because I massively overthink everything. I'm working really hard to not do that. For right now what works for me is to do a nice greetings, wish them well, and provide a quote that fits my very strict requirements of What To Send To Someone I Don't Know Going Through Who Knows What.
And most importantly:
- These are just ideas of mine, how it makes sense for me to do it… I do *not* claim to be doing it the best way, a lot of the letters I see are sooo much nicer than mine, but I'm doing what I can, given my time, talent, and energy level. Don't fall into The Facebook Trap of comparing your normal stuff with those that choose to post the very excellent stuff, it's one of the things that makes social media so dangerous. In fact, I'd encourage you to send in images of what you're doing, even they aren't "super stupendous" so that everyone can see the wide range of what's going on, and not feel bummed that theirs aren't fantastic.
Keep making the world a better place, everyone! I'm very happy to be a part of such a great project, doing what we can to bring happiness to isolating/isolated seniors.
