My lovely oddballs, are you looking for a penpal?
I see a lot of people wanting to write more letters in the weird world we’re all living in right now. I support this fully.
If you’re looking for a penpal, be smart, be diligent, be brave. There are many websites and blogs for finding penpals, but they’re not all created equal, and not all penpals are looking for the same thing.
Some places like penpalworld.com, interpals.com or penpalsnow.com are about culture and language exchange.
Postcrossing.com is a great place if you love postcards, but don’t necessarily care about building a penpal relationship. Swapbot.com is similar, and great for people looking for stuff.
I recommend tumblr or other social media if you want to reach out to artists or creatives.
Search for specific penpal blogs for stationary and ephemera addicts. A great one that comes to mind is The League of Extraordinary Penpals at extraordinarypenpals.com, but there are so many, including ones here on tumblr. There are more resources than you think, just search, search, search.
Depending on where you look, keep in mind that you might get emails from strange people, scam artists, people who make you uncomfortable... like I said, be smart, be diligent, be brave.
This leads to my most important recommendation: SENDSOMETHING.NET
It’s a lovely little community of creators, writers, artists, collectors and oddballs. They’re my kind of weirdos, who love to collect strange articles of paper, send you handcrafted art and make letter writing a cathartic, artistic endeavor. It’s a secret little pocket of the internet that I’ve found entirely wholesome and inspiring. Do explore. And of course, be smart, be diligent, be brave.