The use of writing letters to yourself

No matter where American travel writer Kassondra Cloos goes or how busy she gets, she always makes time to sit down at a nice café to write a letter to herself and mail it home. She finds that writing forces her to slow down when she’s on the road.

I find a clarity while in another country, trying on another reality. It’s easier to understand what matters most to me and what I can do without. It’s somehow easier for me to write a letter to myself and send it off than it is to capture everything in a journal. My journal is a disorganized stream of consciousness, where I dump feelings, fears, accomplishments and dreams. There, I write for that moment, getting things down on paper that I need to sort through.

My letters are often written as if my near-future self is another person, someone who hasn’t seen the same sunsets and beaches I have. I do occasionally flip through old journals years later to see how I’ve changed. But it feels quite different when a letter arrives in the mail. Instead of writing for my far-off future self, I’m writing for the self I’ll become in just a couple of weeks or months. I want to show that person the world I’m living in at the moment I’m writing from, to bring her back to a moment of happiness I never want to forget.