letters

letters are a very interesting medium. it has been said that emails have spawned horrible communication habits (shorthand, use of spellcheck, etc.). but one of the most egregious flaws in email is the ability to read and easily edit what you've written. this, it is said in Shipley & Schwalbe's Send, a book on email etiquette, amounts to the ability to edit yourself. indeed the very message you're trying to convey becomes diluted and worn, much to the extreme of any latter day Shyamalan movie. i beg to differ.

for the past two weeks i've struggled with a letter. it has been sitting in an envelope, sealed, addressed and being currently used as a bookmark in Bryson's Short History of Nearly Everything. frustrating as it is and as wholly disappointed in myself as i am, this letter simply refuses to be mailed.

it's not the fact that it needs to be sent to eastern canada. it's not the fact that i simply have to make a trip to the post, something that even when i'm not itching to send never is a problem. the issue is, not surprisingly, the content. i often will second guess myself when it comes to wondering if i'm interesting enough to be written about. it is a paradoxical problem indeed. the problem goes as follows:

• i am not interesting enough to write about, even if i am the author.
• i am, apparently, so self-absorbed that i seem to think that i am the only thing that should be written about.
• if i am so self-absorbed so as to think this, it should not be a problem writing about me.

as contrived as this logic may be, it is all i can do not to think about it. i have a letter, sitting in a sealed and addressed envelope. the recipient may or may not be expecting it, i have no idea. if they aren't, i'm obviously either as self-absorbed as the statement sounds or entirely pathetic (or both). if they are, my dearest apologies: i'll be with you just as soon as i figure my own head out enough to make it to the post.


-e