One of my free-time hobbies is mailing my friends the old-school way—that is, writing and sending an actual, physical letter via snail mail. Even though it has a price compared to an e-mail, a nice, carefully-written letter has a certain charm to it, which far outweighs the cost, in my opinion, no matter whether you’re the sender or the receiver. I even receive letters from my friends occasionally. There’s something pleasing about checking the mailbox and seeing a letter in it, and the excitement of ripping the envelope open and reading its contents.
I even have a few timesavers and enhancements. For example, I created and printed my own decorative letterhead paper that has a pre-printed fold mark on the upper third, meaning I can fold the letter into a DL envelope without having to eyeball the folds manually.
Also, I use the LaTeX system coupled with the scrlttr2 class with a custom boilerplate (that I wrote myself) for careful typesetting, because it produces more pleasing results compared to a regular word processor.
One more thing, I pay for all postage online—I can fill in the addresses, weight and other information into the post office’s web app, and it lets me know the cost in advance. When I pay, a barcoded label (not unlike a shipping label) gets generated which I can print directly onto an envelope or on a self-adhesive label, saving time spent at the post office.
It’s pretty darn amazing what technology’s capable of these days.
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