My wife Bintou banned me from skateboarding a couple of years ago and I am probably one injury away from losing pickup basketball. Of course, none of this is really on Bintou. It’s more about me coming to terms with my aging body.

Birding and postcard-writing are two hobbies that are very compatible with this current life stage. They also offer a much more sensible way of obtaining that little hit of dopamine compared to just about everything else we are being peddled. But we’ll get to that later.

With birding, I was taunted into it by a little burnt headed passerine. With the postcards, it was more of a delayed fuse. I have actually been running a postcard project with a former guide from Timbuktu for 9 years. In 2018, a website called Postcrossing wrote a blog post about the project. Do you know about Postcrossing?

From their website:

• What is Postcrossing? The goal of this project is to allow anyone to send and receive postcards from all over the world! The idea is simple: for each postcard you send, you will receive one back from a random postcrosser from somewhere in the world.
• Why? Simply because, like its founder, there are lots of people who like to receive real mail. Receiving postcards from different places in the world (many of which you probably have never heard of!) can turn your mailbox into a box of surprises — and who wouldn’t like that?

Despite this simple and beautiful concept, and the fact that I was running a postcard project (that they promoted on their blog!), I did not become an active postcrosser until late last year. One reason for the delay is/was that sending and receiving naked postcards in Mali is a challenge, one that has only become more difficult in the wake of Mali’s ongoing diplomatic dispute with France.*

But two years ago, we half-way moved to Senegal and I finally got a functioning PO Box. I quickly learned that the Senegalese Poste is a well-oiled machine. In fact, I now route all the postcards from Timbuktu through Senegal.**

In October of last year, I made a little vlog from Senegal for Scoot West Africa in which I displayed our new PO box address and encouraged people to send mail our way. It worked. I started to get mail. From all over the place. Postcards, mostly, but also some letters. Do you know how thrilling it is to get physical mail? A handwritten letter from someone? Maybe you do. Everyone loves mail, right? 

But what about writing and sending my own cards? For every card or letter I received that included a return address, I sent a card back. Once I wrote the first 4 or 5 cards I had some wind in my sails, and I realized something: I was enjoying this. Unloading thoughts. Writing slowly. Drawing little hornbills. Imagining the reaction of the recipient. 

Again, I realize that this might sound bizarre – I had been running a postcard project for 8 years. I suppose it’s kind of like having a kayak in your garage. That you’ve never used. The day you take that thing out, you might realize – or remember – that you really like kayaking. 

Once I got into a rhythm of writing and sending cards, I remembered I had a postcrossing account. I dusted off the cobwebs there and requested an address. I got Michaela in Wegburg, Germany. Her profile photo was a picture of a husky. In the about section, she wrote that she was happy to receive any kind of postcard, but she would be ecstatic to receive anything featuring:

Wolves, Fairies, Huskies, Alaskan Malamutes, Arwen, Galadriel from Lord of the rings, Twilight, CSI, Lighthouses, Halloween (Halloween greeting cards are welcome, too), Brad Pitt, Nice fantasy postcards (Briar, Nene Thomas, Anne Stokes, Selina Fenech etc.), Beautiful landscapes with sunsets.

I ended up sending Michaela a postcard of a mosque in Chinguetti, Mauritania. It’s what I had at the time. It took about a month to arrive. She was thrilled. On Postcrossing, she had sent and received over 18,000 cards. Yes, eighteen thousand. But this was her first card from Senegal. It was actually only the 632nd card ever sent from Senegal through postcrossing. To put that in perspective, 15 million postcards have been sent from Germany through the site. 

When you first start a postcrossing account, you can send up to 5 cards at a time. For each card, you are given a code. Michaela’s was SN-632. You write that code on the card. When Michaela gets it, she registers that code and it will link it with my account. You can now exchange messages if you want. Every time one of your cards is successfully received and registered, another postcrosser is assigned your address and you will have a card coming your way.

Let’s just say that every time I go to the post office now, the reward centers of my brain start lighting up before I make it out of the house. I typically read my postcards in the company of Cheikh, one of the poste employees who has a huge smile and is often even more excited than I am when a new card comes in. But believe me, I’m beaming too. Holding this thing in my hands that has traveled thousands of miles, that someone took their time with – the little weather reports, the drawings, stickers, the choice of stamps, the random story, the mini-bio, the cryptic poem, the This is What I’m Doing Today, the curiosity, the “wow! I have never sent a postcard to Senegal before!” Every postcard is somehow a piece of art. Even the wear and tear and the haphazard post office interventions play a role in it. I cherish every single one I get.

Because I put birds and birdwatching as interests in my profile, I get a LOT of bird postcards. Often with stories about birds AND BIRD STAMPS to go with it. I LOVE this. 

This card even had a SCOOTER STICKER (in my profile I talk about riding scooters around West Africa). 

I have now become penpals with some of the people I was randomly assigned on postcrossing. I even have plans to meet up with one of them! I also swap cards with people on instagram and I will occasionally post a story announcing that I will send a card to the first person that sends me their address. All of this is to say that I have become a little postcard-obsessed. 

Here is why that’s a good thing

1. Postcards are analog  

Something magical happens when you get away from screens and algorithms and put pen to paper. When you sit down and write and concentrate on another person. And when you finish writing, you can hold this thing in your hands. You leave your house and go to the post office with it. You might even have a conversation with someone before it’s all said and done. The person who receives it can also hold this thing in their hands. They may put it on their refrigerator and look at it every day.  

I’m not saying you can’t write a meaningful email, but when you think about the torrent of digital refuse that gets spewed all over us from the moment we wake up each day, it isn’t hard to imagine the profound joy you will feel when you receive a handwritten note that has traveled hundreds or thousands of miles. 

2. Postcards provide a healthy way to release coveted brain chemicals 

Scrolling gets you the dopamine, but you feel like garbage afterwards. It also makes you more anxious, less social and destroys your attention span. Postcards offer equally convenient dopamine along with a healthy dose of oxytocin and 0 side effects. What’s wonderful about postcards is that it feels just as good writing and sending them as it does receiving them. 

3. Postcards are an antidote to AI 

I’m not anti-AI. I used AI this morning. To help me sort through addresses on the backend of the postcards site. I do have an issue with AI and creative work. Oliver Burkeman said it better than I can here, but in case you don’t feel like reading his essay toute de suite, let me just say this. More and more often, when I’m reading things online, I find myself struck by a word or a phrase that has a certain je ne sais quoi. Call it a synthetic tinge. At a certain point it feels like I’m being paranoid. But I can’t help it. If I become convinced that a single, solitary word is AI, the whole thing is tainted. 

Imagine going to your favorite restaurant, where everything is supposedly homemade, and you walk by the kitchen and see a giant plastic bag of frozen industrial french fries from Sysco. Those “hand cut artisanal french fries” on the menu are suddenly not so delicious. More than that, you may actually feel a sense of betrayal. You don’t have to worry about this problem with postcards. Postcards are 100% handcrafted and made to order.***

4. Anyone can start sending postcards

You don’t need your friends’ addresses. You don’t even need friends.**** Sign up to Postcrossing. The internet was made for cool shit like this. Postcards are usually quite cheap (you can even make your own!) and so is postage. 

5. Postcard people are good people 

I kind of knew this already from the Timbuktu postcard project. My experience on postcrossing has only reinforced it. In addition to having very diverse interests, postcard people are generally progressive, empathic, curious and open-minded. Postcard people are the kind of people that support independent bookstores and participate in community gardens. They will restore your faith in humanity and convince you that we just might have a fighting chance against the forces of ego and accumulation. 

I don’t know if I’ve convinced you or not, but this is part where I share my address and ask for yours. You can email me yours at phil@philintheblank.net . Mine is : 

Phil Paoletta

B.P. 232 

Ngaparou, Mbour 

Senegal 

My son Andre also loves postcards 😉 

Andre Paoletta

B.P. 232 

Ngaparou, Mbour 

Senegal 

* All international mail from Bamako (that wasn’t destined for neighboring countries) was previously flown to Paris on the daily Air France flight. After the Malian government banned Air France in July 2023, international mail temporarily came to a halt. The mail now goes through Casablanca on Royal Air Maroc flights. 

** The postcards travel 1,200 kilometers on a bus from Bamako to Dakar, and I either ride up on a jakarta from La Somone or take the train from Diamniadio to go and pick them up. The postcards are still stamped and postmarked in Timbuktu. I just put them into an envelope that is stamped and postmarked in Senegal. In other words, more stamps for you!

***I mean, I guess you could use ChatGPT to write a postcard, but you’d have to be a really sick person to do that. Postcard people are definitely not doing this (see point 5). 

**** I do highly recommend sending postcards to your friends, though.