I found out about 52 Projects a few months ago from Kaitlyn Patience of isavirtue.net. (She is a paper artist with a really cool blog.) She does the 52 projects thing and I found it to be really fun, interesting, a fairly easy way to integrate creativity into my everyday life without making me feel like I was taking on some huge, expensive new hobby (like painting, which someday I'm actually going to try. I've always wanted to. Never have, unless you count painting with watercolors when I was a kid, which I loved.)
Anyway, choosing which project to start with turned out to be more difficult than the project itself. (Isn't that just like so many other things in life? Psyching ourselves up for starting turns out to be the bigger task. We sure do get in our own way, don't we?). Anyway, when I read over Project 29, I knew that was the one to start with.
52 Projects: Project 29
Get a regular-sized envelope. Address it to someone special. Then, stuff it with as many things as you can: a letter, photographs, ripped out magazine articles, photocopies of poems, a short story, or passages from a novel, recipes, clipped newspaper articles, art work, poems or stories you’ve written… Anything that can be folded up and put in the envelope. Make sure to stuff it so full that you need to use tape to keep it sealed. This envelope should have serious heft. Once it’s sealed, get the proper postage put on it (definitely use stamps) and mail it off.
An easy enough challenge, right? The only real change I made to the project is that I included stamps on the inside and instructed its recipient to compile an envelope of her own and send it on to someone else. Why not pass it on, right? It was so much fun to be on the lookout for interesting tidbits to send to her. Recipes, articles, old pictures, inspiring quotes--so much fun.
So, who did I choose to send this envelope to? A dear friend of mine was in serious need of some encouragement. When I first read the description of this project, her name popped into my head immediately. The embarrassing part is that it took nearly a month and a half to compile and send that envelope. This stack of things sat on my kitchen counter for nearly four weeks before I finally sent it on its merry way. The good news is that God's timing is so much better than mine is. Although I meant to send the envelope weeks before I actually did, as it turns out, my friend received the envelope on Thanksgiving and she read it during a difficult moment during that day. (Isn't God so cool?)
What an easy way to brighten someone's day. I love receiving real mail. I think this might just have to be something I do on a more regular basis--I mean, why not?
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