on postcrossing
Postcrossing is a website that basically allows you to send and receive postcards from people all over the world. You don’t write to one another (unless you want to, and have agreed to do so beforehand), so if you’re not an extremely social person or lack executive functioning (like me) and can feel a lot of pressure maintaining a long distance friendship, it can be a fun thing. You request for an address on the site, and they will give you one, with an ID that you write down on the postcard you send out. When that person receives the card, they will register that ID, and your address will be given out to another random person that asked for an address. And then you can start all over again!
Anyway, I’m not sure why I decided to look at my sent/received records on Postcrossing, but I did, and this is probably not interesting to anyone other than myself, but:
I joined Postcrossing in April 2008. That’s about 14 years ago! But, I haven’t even reached 150 cards sent on my account. This is because (1) I am not very active on Postcrossing even during the years I was “active”, and (2) there were many years when I wasn’t using Postcrossing at all. Obviously, I was more active back then. Throughout April to December 2008, I sent 50 cards and received 47. Even my 2022 record won’t beat that (probably), as I’m already nearly 7 months into the year and have not sent 30 cards this year yet. But I’ll get to 2022 later!
I was still Postcrossing in 2009, but at a slower pace, and for some reason I kind of stopped around September 2009. This was around the time my interest in Arashi became a special interest, so I was probably too focused on Arashi to be spending a lot of time Postcarding. I did send 28 cards and received 32 cards in the 9 months I was active!
I didn’t really do any Postcrossing, the next year, with the exception of sending/receiving some cards in August and December 2010. I received a total of 6 cards, and received 4 that year.
After almost a year of inactivity, I tried to get actively Postcarding again in around August-October 2011. In this time, I sent 15 cards and received 13.
I didn’t actually send or receive anything in 2012, but I did receive (and register) a card that year, and one of the cards I sent in December 2010 somehow arrived and got registered.
I didn’t do any Postcrossing in 2013, either. That makes two whole years of inactivity!
In January 2014, I did try to revive the Postcrossing thing, but this effort only lasted til March. I received 17 cards in those 3 months, and sent 14.
2015-2016, I wasn’t Postcrossing at all. Again.
I finally got back into Postcrossing in March 2017, sending only a few cards every month until May that year. Total sent for 2017 was 10, total received was 6. I guess this was only one round of postcarding.
I went into another hiatus and didn’t do any Postcrossing throughout 2019-2021. In 2020, I actually did feel like Postcrossing, but at the time Post Malaysia wasn’t delivering anything, so I waited until early 2022, when they were sending to a few countries. (In most of 2021 they were only delivering to Singapore, but I did send some cards to friends and family, just not on Postcrossing.)
And now… it’s July 2022, I’ve been actively postcrossing again since January this year, with 29 received this year so far, and 27 sent. I’m looking at my older records and finding all the gaps interesting, while also regretting it a bit, because I could have sent at least one card a month back then!
Of course, these are just my Postcrossing records. Family members still brought me back postcards every time they were on work trips overseas. I was still buying postcards whenever I traveled, and sent cards to myself at least once, every time I was in Japan. Sometimes, when traveling with friends who were into snail mail, like Patricia or Fatin or Isabelle, we also sent each other cards. And before I was using LINE regularly, my main method of communication with Kishiko were letters and postcards. And some of those times I was inactive on Postcrossing, I was still swapping cards on Swap-Bot! So my Postcrossing records aren’t really a true indication of my postcarding activities, but I figure it’s close enough, because every time I was writing a lot of cards, I was usually also sending the occasional Postcrossing card.
This year I started to use Geography Postcards and PostFun alongside Postcrossing, and am doing more Swap-Bot swaps, so it’s different again. I’m not as active on these sites, but they’re really interesting alternatives for me - in postcrossing, I do get an interesting mix of cards, but the ones I get from Geography Postcards are all place-specific and usually include interesting information about the place the cards are from, while the cards I receive from PostFun tend to be the sort of interesting cards I’m less likely to get from Postcrossing (the last one I received was a Pixar card!). This year is also the first time I’m using the Postcrossing forum and the GoodReads Postcard Exchange Group as a place to find postcard penpals and people to trade with, which means I’m really sending more cards right now than ever, despite what my Postcrossing records say.
I have zines for sale!
Colour versions of my minizines are available for RM3 each (right now I have my Jan, Mar, and Apr ones on hand but I can also make copies of the others if you want them.)
A Year of Mini-Zines, so far -
Jan22: Dear Customer Feb22: You Can’t Be Autistic! Mar22: Read More Books Apr22: Animal Crossing and Folklore May22: Special Interest: Superheroes Jun22: Read With Pride Jul22: The Stars Look Very Different Today
Also available, books in the time of corona a mini-zine I made during lockdown in 2020. A quaranzine!
And, and! super fairy animal #18 is now available! It’s print on demand because the contents are basically selected stuff from 2021 papirtosts, but it’s only RM10 which is not bad kan.
Stay safe!