Tag Archives: Twitter

Day 27: Nicky

I asked the Twitter world yesterday who I should write to today and got a response back from a friend and former coworker in Oklahoma City who thought his son would appreciate a letter.

Screen Shot 2015-01-26 at 10.50.45 PM

I love the fact that he checks the mailbox every day – I used to do the same thing. I remember how excited I’d get when I got a letter in the mail which usually only happened around my birthday or the holidays.

I hope he enjoys getting the letter and I look forward to hearing back from him!

YoL-3-2

Dear Nicky,

I am a friend of your father’s and he told me that you like to receive mail – me too! I like to send and receive handwritten letters. In fact, I have made a promise to send a handwritten letter to someone every day this year. You are the 27th person that I have written to!

YoL-4-2I wrote to another boy in Oklahoma – his name is Cade and he lives in Yukon. He wrote a letter to every NFL team. I thought that was pretty cool.

I heard that you are in kindergarten. Who is your teacher? What is your favorite part about school? Do you like sports? I bet you like OSU – I think your mom and dad both went to school there. Do you have any brothers or sisters?

I live in Washington, DC. It’s an amazing city full of historic monuments and important buildings like the White House where the president lives and also the Capitol where the congress meets. Have you been here? If not, maybe your parents will bring you some time.

I have to go now. I hope that you will write me back.

Your friend,
Reed

Sunday Notes

Me mailing the letter to Steve Carell from his hometown of Newton, MA. It was about 0 degrees when I snapped this photo.

Me mailing the letter to Steve Carell from his hometown of Newton, MA. It was about 0 degrees when I snapped this photo.

Good morning! Every Sunday I will either share a letter written by someone else – maybe a famous letter or perhaps a letter from my shoebox full of saved letters – or I’ll update you on the Year of Letters; responses that I have received and other tidbits that might not weave their way into the daily posts. Think of it like a day that you can kind of get a broader view on the project.

It’s been almost two weeks since I started the project and already I feel that I have learned some things. Here are 5 lessons learned so far:

  1. This takes a lot of time. Not so much writing the letters, but managing the blog, getting the photographs of the letters, etc.
  2. I have terrible handwriting. Now this isn’t really anything new to me, but none the less it saddens me to see my inconsistent scribbles in the photographic images of my letters. I sure hope it gets better through this project.
  3. Despite that people rarely send them, everyone loves to receive handwritten letters.
  4. Either I did a terrible job promoting my writing session yesterday here in DC or people don’t like to meet up to write letters – which is quite possible.
  5. My hands feel very arthritic and I worry about the remaining 354 days.

So far I’ve heard back from…

Whole Foods (Day 3) tweeted at me that they were happy that I shared the story of their employee who went the extra mile for our family over Thanksgiving.
A.R. and Aimee (Day 5) wrote me and said that I’ll be receiving a letter in the mail from them.
The Kimpton Group (Day 6) replied to me via Twitter – my request looks promising!Screen Shot 2015-01-10 at 11.42.16 PM
Several people via email, Facebook and Twitter who have been extremely supportive of this project and one person even sent me some of their favorite stationery for me to use. THANK YOU Nicole!

I’ll be back tomorrow morning, sharing another letter.