part-time deltiologist
This is what’s written on my (very rarely updated) postcard blog:
I’ve been collecting postcards on and off since I was a kid – exchanging them while trading zines, buying them every time I’m on vacation, and getting them from family members who went overseas. In January 2007 I discovered Swap-Bot, and from then on I started collecting more actively! Since then I also started to swap on Postcrossing and the Postcrossing Forums. I’m less active on these sites now, but I still buy postcards everywhere I go, and receive them from friends.
Postcards have been one of my special interests in a long time, but for the last three/four years or so, I haven’t talked about them much, because I was on “pause”. Checking my Postcrossing profile, I could see a clear pattern - I was very active from 2008 to 2011, but then stopped sending out cards until becoming active again in 2014, and went on another hiatus until 2017. Three year gaps, both times. And even now, I really started getting into postcards again last year, but I was only sending to people I know because Pos Malaysia not allowing mail to countries other than Singapore. Late last year, the restriction’s been lifted for many countries (we’re still restricted from mailing to about 101 countries right now) and international postcards are back to costing 90 cents (from RM4 when I mailed to Singapore last year!) so I’m actively writing and mailing postcards again.
This year I learned that February is the month of both the Month of Letters (#LetterMo) and International Correspondence Writing Month (#InCoWriMo) challenges. For #LetterMo, the goal is to write & mail something a day on every day of the month, AND reply to every mail you receive that month. For #InCoWriMo, it’s just to handwrite & deliver something each day of the month.
The spirit of #LetterMo would mean delivering by post, while #InCoWriMo is okay with any method of delivery as long as it gets to the hands of the recipient. Since I’m sending out a few postcards bvery day of this month for #LetterMo, I’m staggering my international mail to one a day so that it fits both challenges :)
I love postcards because these days we’re always texting one another anyway and there might not be a lot to say in a letter, not to mention writing letters take more time/spoons and I feel bad every time I write stuff and yet somehow can’t bring myself to the post office counter to get stamps for it and yeah, I’m in an okay mind space today so I can see how ridiculous these excuses may seem to an NT, but the thing is I never know when I’m going to be okay and when I’m not, and coming out of a long shutdown to find weeks/months-old unsent letters just makes me feel like shit. Postcards are easier because the postage is more or less standard and I usually have enough stamps at home, and just need to drop them off in a mail box. I know ADHD folks who also prefer postcards because you don’t have to write much and it’s something you can just do right now without having to focus too much. Plus, if I get into a long funk and come to with a stack of unsent postcards, I usually don’t feel as bad about it, somehow? I just send them out, adding notes to them first maybe, like “hey! I found this unsent postcard I wrote to you, so I’m sending it now!”
(I know that I can do that with letters too but somehow the postcards doesn’t make me feel as bad. I don’t know why.)
As someone who loves collecting and sorting and cataloging stuff, postcard collecting gives me a lot of satisfaction. I like some types of cards more than others - I especially like cards bought from art exhibitions, or cards featuring comics or illustrations from books, esp kid lit - but I collect them all, because for me part of the joy is in the sorting/cataloging, which won’t be as fun if I only collected a certain type of card.
I’ve written in my blog that I think this interest started from when I was a kid - my parents bought postcards everywhere we stopped when we went on road trips when we lived in the US. My dad worked with a uni in LA and had summers off, I think? So we had road trips and camping trips around California/Nevada tourist spots, and vacations all the way in the East Coast. My childhood best friend was living in DC so we only saw each other during these trips, until both of our families moved to KL and lived two houses down from one another when I was 9 to 11yo. Those years were probably the best years of my life, when everything from the grocers to my school to the mall to all my friends were in walking distance, (not to mention I was at an age before it was “uncool” to like things, and definitely before I was suddenly deemed “too old” for someone perceived-as-female to continue liking “guy” things like X-Men comics and Robotech, or “kiddy” things like My Little Pony and fairy tales) but that’s another story to be told another time.
Anyway. When we were still in LA I wasn’t allowed to hold any of the postcards my parents bought and kept blank, which were stacked haphazardly and tied together with a rubber band or something like that. I remember being interested in them, and being told I was too young to appreciate them? But when I was around 9, and we were living in Sri Rampai, I was asked to go through them and sort them by state. I had so much fun doing that, and looking at all the pictures, even though none of them were of Glendale or even LA, I felt some of my homesickness was alleviated somehow. I kept going back to them and looking through them, over and over, and asking my parents about our time at Sequoia National Park, or if we really stopped by Maryland. I felt better, hearing stories about my brother pretending to be lost at the camping grounds because he wanted to see people search for him, and seeing pictures of 2yo sitting me on the car hood during one of the stops. It was probably the fact that I was never really told about the move in a way that would prepare me for it, and the fact that I am really, really bad at dealing with change (I will forever be thankful that Arashi gave us two years’ notice and eased us into their hiatus), but moving to Malaysia was a traumatising experience for me, and these postcards helped to give me a focus. They made me feel like I still had a piece of home with me, and that made me start keeping hotel postcards (remember when hotels used to have these in the rooms?) when we went anywhere.
It was still a passive collection for the most part, just me getting one or two cards everywhere I went somewhere different (which was not often) until I discovered Postcrossing and Swap-Bot around 2007/2008. By then, I had lost touch with most of the people I traded zines with, and so no longer received zines/letters/cards regularly in the mail. It was very nice to look forward to checking the mailbox again, especially when I’ve been active for awhile, and was getting a couple of cards a week. I had colleagues back then who also sent me cards whenever they were traveling, or happened to find a card they thought I’d like. And Kino was still selling cards other than the ugly touristy ones back then, so I sometimes bought art postcards for myself, or to send to others.
I was planning to start sending a bit of snail mail again this year, but now, over a week into the Month of Letters, I find that writing at least one postcard a day is kind of addictive. As in, I want to send more. As in, I’ve been spending more time writing cards/looking out for nice cards and stamps than playing Animal Crossing this month. As in, I think I’ll continue sending lots of postcards (and maybe letters) after the month is over.
If you would like to receive a postcard from me, and I don’t have your address yet, just reply to this email with your mailing address. If you want to, you can ask me to write about something specific in the card, too :)
Stay Safe!