December Letterboxing!

Blue Butterfly and I were lucky enough to get away this weekend and do some letterboxing!  We stopped by to find PRINCE JOHN first.  The clue mentioned that it might be missing, but we found it safely in it's appointed spot.  This is another amazing carving by Boots Tex.  We also stamped in to SEA MAID WAS HERE, then moved on to find BY THE BAY: QUILT BLOCK SERIES-- CREEPY CRAB by Lone Star Quilter.  We had a fun time stamping in to these.

One of the fun boxes to find was called BROWN PELICAN.  It is located inside the Visitor's Center in historic Galveston.  The clue seems a little vague, but putting all the hints together to find this one and stamp in made for an exciting, intriguing experience.  The stamp is not hand carved, but it is custom made.  We were all smiles while we stamped into this letterbox.

We arrived at the park where CRANING FOR WATER is located, but there was a crew there setting up for an event, so we left and came back on Sunday morning.  This is a great little garden and we enjoyed finding and stamping in to our last box before leaving the island.

Thanks to all who planted these for us to find!

Just Thinking and Sharing

I caught up on reading a few posts from the Texas Yahoo! list this morning and there seems to be some concern about the direction of letterboxing and the habits of Texas Letterboxers.  I thought I’d throw my $.02 in here.  :-)

Blue Butterfly and I have been letterboxing since June 2005 (Seven years…really???) and we LOVE it.  I love the adventure of following the clues, the surprise of seeing what the stamp looks like, and peering through the logbook to see who has visited before me.  I enjoy planting boxes, though carving isn’t my favorite—I’m just not good at it.  However, I love getting e-mails from fellow boxers who have discovered my box and say nice things about it.  That definitely never gets old.  I have been called a traditional letterboxer by one of my letterboxing pals.  I like doing things the old fashioned way, in what I feel is the true spirit of this wonderful hobby.

As far as having time for letterboxing, I am in the middle of a career change and my time is split between graduate school and a couple of part time jobs.  So my participation has definitely waned in the past year, but my love for the hobby has not.  TALE 10 is coming up in March and I’m looking forward to it, and desperately hoping that my schedule will work out so that I can attend. 

The Yahoo! discussion turned to the issue of getting more people into the hobby.  Boxers mentioned that they have tried to get family or friends involved, but it just didn’t work out for them.  I don’t think recruitment into the hobby has always proven to be what brings people into the hobby.  It seems to me that some of the more “die-hard” letterboxers weren’t recruited necessarily, but sort of “accidentally” discovered letterboxing.  You can hear stories like, “my brother-in-law found a book about it and mentioned it to us” or “I saw a blurb about it in a magazine”.  Our own discovery of the hobby was serendipitous. 

Some letterboxers are concerned with the quantity of active boxers in our state.  Perhaps it is our “Texas attitude” that bigger (or in this case, more) is better.  To be honest, I kind of enjoy being in a small, secret group. I enjoy being part of a unique club that includes people from different walks of life who can sit and talk for hours about nothing but their hobby.  When we are with letterboxers, that’s exactly what we are—letterboxers.  We leave our everyday labels, such as teacher, student, carpenter, flight attendant, nurse, cashier, etc. at home and we just enjoy each other as letterboxers and that is AMAZING to me.  The past few years, events have felt more and more like a family reunion to me.  The quality of the relationships among letterboxers is what has impressed me most about this hobby.

Thanks to all of the letterboxers who have planted for me to find, who have found and enjoyed my letterboxes, and who have become a part of my letterboxing family! 

Self-Care and Burnout

For those of you who don't know, I am currently in graduate school, which means my "extra-curricular" activities have slowed to a crawl. However, I feel compelled to share my reaction to something I just read in my text book.

The book for this course is entitled Issues and Ethics in the Helping Professions. In the particular chapter that I am reading tonight, there is a discussion about burnout and self care. There is a short questionnaire designed to help us reflect throughout our career to see if we are on the verge of burnout. The question that got my attention (and thus the reason for this post) was this:

Do you have a passion in your life other than your work?

HA HA!! OF COURSE I DO!

Are you telling me that what I "mainly do" could be an important part of my physical, emotional, and mental health as a future helping professional? I think that 's EXACTLY what it is saying!

Now, if I can find a way to get tax deductions for this hobby of mine...