Long-Distance Love: Prompts for Writing Letters

In case you've noticed by brief absence this last week, I've been offline more than usual since my boyfriend H came to visit me in Michigan from where we both live in North Carolina. As a little bit of background, H and I started dating in high school (our sophomore year) after he spent months annoying me in French class. But after high school, he stayed to go to school in NC while I moved to Florida, spending my summers traveling or in Michigan.

So obviously, we don't see each other too often. A few times during the school year. Christmas. The month of May. That's pretty much it.

Sometimes it's hard. It's really really hard. I'm a naturally terrible communicator and that doesn't make LDRs easy. But over the years, we've found ways of making it work. One of which is letter-writing. We both love getting special little token gifts, and letters fill that for us. It's old-fashioned and sort of silly, but it's so exciting to open the mailbox and get something from hundreds of miles away.

But sometimes, it's hard to know what to write about. We already text all the time and talk on the phone and FaceTime, so it's not as if we don't know what's going on in each other's lives. Going off that, I've been coming up with a list of prompts to use for writing letters to a long-distance love--or even family or friends if you tweak them a little.

1. Recall a fun or happy memory in as much detail as possible. Don't forget that little moments can be some of the best memories.
2. Share a dream for the future.
3. Tell your SO about something you saw or experienced recently that made you think of them. 
4. Reminisce on your first date or the first time you met.
5. List a few quirks about your SO that you love or funny mannerisms that you miss. 
6. Plan a date for the next time you're together.
7. Write an acrostic poem using their name as the lines.
8. Send an old-school selfie. Take a picture of yourself and print it out and mail it!
9. If you both speak another language, write a short letter in that language and make them work a little to read about how much you love them.
10. Talk about a vacation you would like to take or a destination to visit with them.
11. List a few ways your SO makes you proud.
12. Tell your SO about where you live if they've never visited.
13. Send a list of songs as an old-fashioned mixtape! If you're really ambitious, you could mail a CD or usb drive with songs on it or just a url to a playlist online.
14. Draw them a doodle.
15. List a few things your SO does for you that you appreciate.
16. Recall a childhood memory or story they may not have heard before.
17. Describe your SO using only three words and explain why you chose those words.
18. Make a list of things you need your SO for (i.e. I need H to help me get things off the top shelf at the grocery store.)
19. Write a silly haiku. (Remember--it's three lines with five, seven, and five syllables, respectively.)
20. Write as many reasons as you can why you love them.

Have any others to add? Are you a letter-writer?

My Favorite Way to Make Long Distance Suck Less

Long distance relationships suck. They really do. But H and I have worked really hard to find ways to make it suck just a teensy bit less. One of our favorite ways is writing letters to each other. At first, it seemed a little silly. I would always end up telling H what I wanted to tell him in the letter before it even got to him! But now, I love getting and sending letters because they are a guaranteed smile in our sometimes lonely days.

Sometimes though, life gets in the way, and I don't have time to sit down, write a letter, go buy stamps, and take my letter to the post office. That's where Treat, a new branch of Shutterfly, comes in.

On Treat, you can pick out a card and write it, all on your computer. All you have to do then is put in the recipient's address and it'll send it off! And it turns out to be the same price as a cute card and a stamp would be anyway. And the cards are adorable--this is the one I sent H last week!

How sweet is that? You can add in your recipient's name and even a photo of the two of you, so that they can fold over the card and frame it or pin it up somewhere when they're done!

And if you're not a letter-writer, Treat makes birthdays sooo easy! I'm one of those people who loves the idea of writing all my friends birthday cards, but I always forget! Now, I've just popped all their birthdays in the handy birthday reminder section of my account and it reminds me to send them a card! Or you can even write a card and schedule it to be sent up to a year later!

Anyways, I was just introduced to Treat and wanted to share it with you! Let's be honest: Treat is pretty cool and we all need it in our lives.

Big eight-arm octopus hugs to Treat for letting me try out these cards! All opinions are totally my own, because who doesn't want to send a card with an octopus on it? No one, that's who.

Why Long-Distance Relationships (Sometimes) Rock

(This picture has nothing to do with this post, but it looks kind of pretty right? Taken in Marseille, France.)

Welp. Sometimes life has a way of getting ahead of you. I had glorious plans for my blog this summer--I was going to get back to posting (nearly) every day, commenting on all my fave blogs (I promise I'm reading, just silently) and staying in the game. 

But I kind of forgot that I sort of have stuff going on. You know, life. I promised a June Recap on Wednesday (umm, like five days ago). But H came to visit and we had five glorious days of pretending to be tourists, eating yummy food and having feel-talks. 

Having H come visit is and was so wonderful. He's my best friend and the one who knows the most about me in the whole world. So obviously, having him 800 miles away from me two months out of the year and 450 miles away for another 9 months of the year sucks. But long distance has been really good for us in a lot of ways.

We form separate lives. In North Carolina, H and I have a lot of mutual friends, which is great. But sometimes, I just want to go shopping and he just wants to watch movies and drive around with the boys (or whatever they do). 

We've learned to communicate more effectively. We both work a lot and because of the service around where I live, our phone calls are infrequent and often cut off in the middle. Hearing his voice is so much more special to me now that I don't get to hear it all the time. 

We've learned to trust each other, so much. The first time we lived apart, I struggled with jealousy about a certain female friend of his (who, by the way, was totally on the prowl). Since then, we (meaning I) have learned to trust him and ourselves and our relationship. 

Lastly, receiving handwritten cards and letters = the best. I think that's self-explanatory. There's something so familiar and homey about getting them and recognizing his weird handwriting and the way he never dots his 'i's.

Also, I have more time to catch up on Netflix without date nights. Kidding. 

Anyways. Rambling over. 

This has been a sappy post about H, thanks to my dad for buying him a plane ticket to visit me and to H for loving me. Love you poopface. Sorry for writing a blog post about you without asking you first. 

Planning Ahead: Goals for the Week, Month and Summer

Today is our regularly scheduled beginning-of-the-month goal-making sesh, with a little twist in that I'm also going to share a little bit about my goals for the summer as a whole! I know summer feels like it started a month ago but technically I'm only a little over a week late. Please forgive me. And I'm making the executive decision not to recap on my last set of weekly goals because they're boring and I pretty much failed at all of them. Whatever.

This week is suuuper exciting for me because my boyfriend H is coming to visit on Wednesday! To recap (in case you don't keep up with my life), I work in Michigan during the summers and H stays back home in NC. The last few years, we've just done long distance loving for two months but this year, he's finally coming to visit me! I want to make sure I am really intentional about spending time with him and showing him around my town. 

Secondly, I failed last week at writing thank you cards for all my graduation gifts--I didn't do any at all. And that's super embarrassing. I absolutely have to finish those this week.

This month is going to be pretty low-key. I don't have a lot of huge events or plans. I do have secret(ish) to share with you though. I've been working on a series of hand-lettered cards + prints that I can't wait to share with you all. Without giving away too much, I'll tell you that there is a fair in my town in late July that I am reserving a table at so that I can sell them and test out the waters for this new venture. I'm not sure if it's something that will stick or not but we'll see! So in short, my goal is to continue doing lettering for the fair and hopefully be all ready to sell them!

This summer, I would really, really, really like to get in good habits of exercise and reading. Both are things that I love to do, but I'm not always motivated to carve out time for them. My goal is to read six books before classes start, including my required reading book. Slightly more vague, I also aim to have developed an exercise regime that I can take with me to college in the fall.

I think that about does it! Oh! And I'm again linking up with The Nectar Collective on this post. What are your goals for the summer? What do you have planned that you're excited about?