The Idea

The Continental Correspondent is an idea I came up with as I was driving across Europe after a visit home seeing family and friends. I knew that it would most likely be months if not years before I was to see all of them again, and so I wanted to explore ways of staying in touch other than the usual Whatsapp group chat, scattered message thread or the infrequent call. All of these forms of communication are fine in their own right and serve a purpose, however they suffer from the modern day issue of being unfocused and impersonal, they do not provide connection in the way sitting around with friends and family in person.

So The Continental Correspondent was born.

The idea is to simple, I am going to start sending letters.

That’s it. That’s the whole concept.

Now I know a letter will not adequately replace the feeling of being with people in person but to me it seems it may provide more of a personal touch which the modern means of communication lack greatly.

A low tech solution to losing connection with people in the digital age, I say low tech because all the letters will be written on an as of yet to be purchased typewriter.

Why a typewriter you ask? Well as a software developer I have learned to type at a much faster rate than I can write, so I hope to be able to write a larger volume of letters than I could should I have decided to write them by hand. Additionally I see it as a challenge to improve the accurracy and intention of my typing as mistakes are not as easily corrected.

This website will be used as a sort of tracker to document how many letters I send, how many correspondence I establish, how many people respond and where they are from. Additionally any other interesting post related stories and tidbits will be posted here.

So what’s next?

In no particular order, to get started I will:

Yours sincerely, The Contintental Correspondent

../