So, I was speaking to my penpal Alex earlier today and he introduced me to "postcrossing" which is a wonderful idea!
Basically, you sign up with your postal address etc...and you request an address and then send a postcard to that person, and once they have received it they register the postcard on the postcrossing site and then it is your turn to receive a random postcard from someone from anywhere in the world! And the great thing is it's completely random and you could receive a postcard from anywhere! I think it's great!

My penpal Mari also told me about postal traffic which is a similar site, but it basically just allows you to post your "ad" with your address and you can either have things sent to you or send things to other people. What I like about this is that there is no way of contacting the people listed on the site other than via post. I find this eliminates the whole "click and send" aspect that I despise so much. It also means you have to be patient though, because you don't know if or when they are going to write back to you.

I was also reading Alex's blog , and I agree with him that I think social networking sites remove the whole aspect of mystery and getting to know someone without knowing anything about them.
I honestly believe that "social" networking sites are more anti-social than social. They make everyone's interactions based on information that is freely available (interests, music taste etc...) when what ever happened to getting to know a complete stranger from scratch? I believe people are beginning to lose the ability to function in a social situation without the aid of facebook or Bebo or Twitter. Nobody knows how to strike up a conversation anymore without a keyboard infront of them.
I find it very frustrating.

Which why I've decided to get more involved with snail mail, swapping and postcrossing etc...I think it is far more rewarding than simply sending a comment or an email.

Isn't it strange how people you were so close with can begin to slip away from you so suddenly? Don't worry, this isn't one of those blogs where I end up pining for someone and complaining about how much I miss them...I think I've done enough of that to last me a while. This is just an observation I am making at this moment in time.
But it is odd, how you can go from speaking to someone everyday, and then suddenly something changes and you no longer speak to them constantly, nor feel the need to constantly speak to them.
The more people I make and break connections with, the more I realise that life isn't cruel or harsh. It just is. People are always complaining about how "Life is so cruel to them" etc...but I don't think that's true. I think that it's neither good nor bad. It's just neutral. It's the choices and decisions you make which make life's experience more positive or more negative.

It seems as though I am becoming better at accepting what I cannot change.
The quicker you accept things, the easier it is to move on.
And I'm a big fan of letting go what I can't control. I'm not saying it's easy, but when you finally manage to let go there is such a tremendous feeling of relief.

Leave the past behind, but treasure the memories.

xo