It's never that the window doesn't present to me wonderful opportunities regardless of how big or small, it's that I seem to feel limited in those opportunities.
My windows felt very small to me this past week when something I attempted to engage in again (and have done for the last 40 years) started to change.
Well, it felt like change to me in a big way.
I was sending another postcard to someone. I've been writing to people since I was 13. My world (and window) began to feel really big, fascinating and maybe I was a little bit fascinating to someone else's life too. A small town kid can only dream.
This person, the soon-to-be recipient of my postcard, labeled ALL of their Post Crossing postcards publicly by “ugly stamps vs nice stamps”. I whole heartedly admit that I wanted to be and among one of the other 58 people whose stamps fell under the “Nice stamps group” and definitely not among the 15 Australians whose Post Crossing post cards that were deemed “Ugly Stamps”.
As a lover of international correspondence, pretty postcards and completely interesting stamps, writing and sending postcards has become more than just sending postcards for me. Since I moved to a predominately industrialised community.
Creative endeavours - even as simple as making or finding pretty postcards, writing something interesting (which is sometimes an anxious process) and sending them off into the far corners of the world has been a complete and utter joy for me! But these opportunities seem to be getting smaller.
I felt this when I joyfully trotted off to my local post office, post card in hand and asked for a postage stamp for Germany.
With my $3.70 in hand, I proudly waited for my stamp, would it be a Kangaroo?, A dingo? The Queen?
The lovely and new Post Office owner happily handed over a very plain, black and white postage label. My heart sank.
"Ohhhh, I don't think it will fit on my post card, it's too long!" I said in protest, really wanting to shout, It's a bleedin' black and white, gross postage label! I'll end up on the UGLY list for sure!!! You've Got to be kidding me!!"
I showed him my postcard in which they took it from me and proceeded to WRAP the label from the back of the postcard to the front of my postcard covering some of the image of the cutest Koala you'd ever seen.
Now I was really in a pickle, ugly stamp AND ugly postcard.
"Are there no Zone 5 stamps available?" I questioned.
A side note: All postcards are sent by zones -
| Zone 1 New Zealand | Zone 2 Asia Pacific | Zone 3 US & Canada | Zone 4 UK & Europe | Zone 5 Rest of the World |
Small Letters | $2.60 | $2.90 | $3.50 | $3.70 | $4.00 |
"No, we no longer sell postage stamps, it's mailing labels only!"
My heart sank again. My window got dismally small.
I left my Post Crossing postcard behind me with a vow of working out a way to continue my creative engagements. I realise I’m going to have to get very creative now and find a way to do send these postcards I so enjoy sharing with others. In what ways do you keep your creative windows open?
I loved this, keep creating and never give up!