I used to write letters. And they were actually sometimes funny and engaging. When I met someone and wanted to keep in touch, I asked for their physical mailing address instead of asking for their mobile number or finding them on Facebook or Instagram.
Because those didn’t exist.
Yes, obviously we had actual land line phones and I could call them, but I’m mostly referring to people I met at conferences and conventions who didn’t live close and thus required a long-distance (and more expensive) phone call.
Now, I was part of the homeschool community in middle and high school, and letter-writing was particularly trendy among us. There were letter round robins and girls would make little books where you had to send it from person to person, adding addresses until it made it back after getting all ten or whatever the specified number was and then the original sender would have new people to write to.
This wasn’t so much a chain letter, there were no ominous warnings to those who didn’t participate, only a request to return the booklet to the sender if you didn’t want to fill it out.
Stickers were always big with letters, and I imagine they still might be for those who send snail mail. No matter how digital we get, we still love stickers.
My original correspondents were my grandmothers, particularly my Grandma Stoke, who started writing on whatever piece of paper was handy and then continued for several days, adding the date and whatever popped into her head, all collected on various notepads and stationery sheets that usually didn’t match. She embellished it all very heavily with stickers, added in some newspaper clippings from my hometown of Rathdrum, Idaho (where she lived) for me to pass on to my parents, and then sent it to me.
I always marveled at how unplanned and imperfect the adorable jumble was when I received it. A perfectionist Grandma was not, but she got the job done. And I love, love looking back at those letters now.
(Photo of actual letters from my grandma stored in old Reebok shoeboxes)
I began pondering all this in the shower this morning. You see, yesterday, I was figuring out how to describe myself. I had come across a descriptive phrase while reading Tiago Forte’s Building a Second Brain where he referred to “writer and photographer Craig Mod.”
I’m not exactly sure why that stopped me in my tracks. I was very happily reading about his take on commonplace books. But I’ve been going through a change in how I view myself due to the simple fact that my youngest son graduated high school last May and I find myself unmoored from the title of “homeschool mom” that has been part of my identity for over a decade.
I have had the title of photographer for almost as long as I’ve been a mother, and longer than I had the title of homeschool mom. In recent years, my photography work has slowed (this was mostly the result of three moves) and it’s been a long while since I shot a wedding, but I still do headshots and take requests for senior photos.
I began ruminating on what my current title would be. Out of curiosity (a defining trait of mine), I looked up Jamie Beck, whose work I’ve followed since I subscribed to her photography blog via Google Reader many moons ago, and she calls herself an “artist and author” on her website.
I have always wanted to be a writer. As a child, I phrased it as an author. My dream was to someday find a book of mine on when walking into the local library. But most of my writing has been confined to letters in the early years (although there are some real howlers of short stories from my middle school days) and then moving to blogging (Livejournal, Xanga, Blogger, and MySpace before finally moving to my own domain) and the micro-writing of Instagram captions.
I never thought I would write non-fiction as a book, but I actually have a very rough first draft of a non-fiction book I wrote as a final-quarter challenge to myself in 2022. I confess I’m kind of scared to go look at it to edit and publish it.
Jeff Goins was giving away digital copies of his book, You Are a Writer, last week and I went ahead and got the Kindle version, although I think I have a copy via PDF that I got from him back when he first published it. I was reading it last night (I always have lots of books going at the same time – I’ll list the current ones at the end) and he says “I was, in fact, a writer. All I had to do was write… Believe you already are what you want to be. And then start acting like it.”
This struck me. I remember with clarity the day I rang a doorbell at the home of my very first paid client and her husband opened the door and called out “Honey, the photographer is here!” I didn’t even call myself a photographer yet. I had no clue what I was doing and showed up with a POINT AND SHOOT digital camera for this maternity session. The images were passable, but the editing was extremely amateur, but she must have liked them, because she hired me for the newborn shoot a couple months later, by which time I had purchased a DSLR. Because her husband called me a photographer and that gave me the confidence I needed to BE one and get a camera that matched my title.
So instead of ruminating on being a writer and holding on to a nebulous someday, I’m just going to write.
Because I’m a writer.
Books I’m actively reading right now (these are Amazon Affiliate links):
Build a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential by Tiago Forte (Kindle)
You Are a Writer (So Start Acting Like One) by Jeff Goins (Kindle)
Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder (Kindle)
How to Walk into a Room: The Art of Knowing When to Stay and When to Walk Away by Emily P. Freeman (audio and Kindle)
Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 by L.M. Montgomery (Kindle)
Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House by Cheryl Mendelson (hardcover and Kindle)
A Curse So Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer (Kindle)
The 5-Second Rule by Mel Robbins (Kindle)
The One Year Chronological Bible NLT (Kindle)
(I like to use Kindle even when I’m reading via another medium, because it collects all my highlights in Goodreads even if it’s a digital library book that I will have to return.)
This post originally appeared on Substack
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