Fold Over Note for the Traveler
Order your tickets and pack your bags, you are finally going on vacation. It doesn’t matter where you’re going. Hey, you always believed that it’s about the ride not about the destination. Be prepared to see the world. This trip is well deserved.
The axioms of a good traveler are many and different. We all have our rituals and weird habits before we go on an adventure. Some people are sleep travelers. These folks carry a pillow everywhere they go. Some are light packers. Carry-on baggage is the only option. Some are dedicated tourists. You must have seen them in the airport. They are the ones who carry fanny packs and cameras everywhere they go. Now, most of us, it is fair to say are a combination of all three. We can’t help it our multiple personalities come out when we hit the road.
Our inclination to take pictures and share our findings with the people in our lives is a human reaction that is innate in all of us. Take a picture next to the Eiffel Tower or the biggest ball of yarn in the world. It’s a brief moment of utter delight caught in a digital still. Can a picture describe the emotions we feel surfing the waters of Hawaii or skiing the mountains of Colorado? Many times a picture is not enough. Yes, that smile may say you’re happy, but it doesn’t describe the total experience.
The tech gods have given us the option to document our lives by a snap of a button. For that, we owe them some gratitude. Take all the clicks you want. It is your right as a modern day Peter Parker. But in between pictures, take pen to paper and capture what a digital camera cannot convey. Our words keep us connected. For the traveler, it is the rush of the written word personalized inside a fold over note. You are just as much of a linguist as a natural born photographer. Remember what it was like walking through the city of Paris? You have taken enough pictures for today. Here’s a fold over note – start writing – you have a lot to say.
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Paulette Leto
Unfortunately, I’m a terrible photographer. My pictures always come out blurry and out of focus. At least I’ve managed to stop somehow getting my finger over the lens – I used to do that ALL THE TIME when I used those disposable single-use cameras regularly. Thankfully, with digital cameras I can just snap a dozen photos and keep the one that turned out halfway decent, at least when taking pictures of inanimate objects. Unfortunately, taking photos of my family and friends doesn’t work so well because they can’t stand still long enough for me to get a picture that I’m happy with.
Still, on the rare occasions I manage to snap a good photo, it’s nice to send out prints to a few people, and that’s where fold over notes come in handy. I don’t generally keep a lot of them handy because I don’t send a lot of photo prints, but whenever I come back from vacation I like to order a few of them in case I have pictures to share.
21 September 2012, 1:33 pmJonathan Price
Paulette, I know what you mean! Some of those disposable cameras had the lens located in the corner, where you could accidentally cover it with your finger when you were just holding the camera normally. And somehow the view would look totally clear, but when you snapped the picture it would be obscured by your finger or whatever.
I share most of my photos online now, but I do have some family members who don’t use Facebook and they like to see photos now and then as well. So I do buy some personalized fold over notes to send pictures to them, because they really are perfect for that. And if I have some left over, they make great birthday cards since you can include money or a gift card in there as well.
21 September 2012, 6:30 pmHilma Conger
I used to do this all the time – I would buy a big stack of personalized fold over notes right before I went on vacation, so that when I came back I could send some great photos to family and friends to show them where I went and what I did on my trip. It sure beats watching some boring slide show, right?
Admittedly, now that I can put all my photos up on Facebook I don’t sent out fold over notes as often, at least not to send photographs. I still do it once in awhile, but nowhere near as often as other personalized stationery that I like to send out. I do still use fold over notes, but more often I include other things like checks, gift cards, or things like that I can send as gifts to people.
21 September 2012, 7:24 pmMary Beth
I can almost never sleep when I travel. Whether it’s an overnight flight across the Atlantic, a 24-hour bus trip to Disney World, or a 2 day car trip to Texas with a layover in Missouri, I just can’t sleep while traveling. This usually results in reaching my destination exhausted and jet lagged, but once I get some rest at my destination then I’m usually alright.
Still, this means I generally try to avoid taking any photos for the first day or so once I reach my destination. No sense wasting a beautiful personalized fold over note by including a picture of a haggard, sleep-deprived Mary Beth looking like all she wants to do is fall over and sleep right there on the ground.
22 September 2012, 3:41 am