Snail mail. Handwriting slows you into meaning something, in a way a text struggles to do. I found the whole rabbit hole on Instagram, of all places, which felt a little ironic. One reel in and I found twenty something artists running mail clubs out of their apartments, one of them making real money a month just sending heartfelt letters and hand-drawn art to strangers who missed getting real mail. Apparently a lot of people are doing this now. I wanted in.
I’m subscribed to seven of them at this point, different artists, different aesthetics, different definitions of what counts as a treasure. I keep thinking about starting my own. Then last week I found out Postcrossing is an actual thing, a whole network of strangers mailing postcards to strangers, and now there’s one sitting on my desk with a random address on it, waiting for me to figure out what to say to someone I’ll never meet.
And look, I’m not anti-tech. But it isn’t just me chasing something tactile. Even the big tech fat cats are doing it. Flat, minimal design had its whole decade and now interfaces are going textured again, buttons that look like you could pick them straight up from the page, icons with real shadow and weight, skeuomorphism dragged back from the dead under some new name every few months, tactile maximalism or whatever they’re calling it this quarter. I’ve always been a collector, anything with weight and a story stapled to it. My mail pile is just the analog version of the same itch, growing a little every month.
by subiksha 
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