I find lately that I am doing a lot of apologizing to people for missing boxes and quite frankly it is a little irritating. I plant letterboxes for people to enjoy. I spend my time breathing life into an idea, carving a stamp, finding a hiding spot, writing [hopefully creative] clues and maintaining my letterboxes. Despite my best efforts, boxes go missing. Although I follow up on missing box reports and keep the status of my boxes updated on the clues as best as I can (and still have a normal life where I work, eat, sleep, etc.), I am not usually able to immediately run out and replace missing boxes, nor do I feel that I owe it to anyone to do so.

When I note on my clues that a box is missing and will be replaced, this is my intention, but that is not to say that it will be next week, next month or even next year. I would consider the replacement of a missing box to be something I can do at my convenience, particularly if it is not near where I live.

So why do I get e-mails from people grumbling because such-and-such letterbox is missing and has not been replaced yet? And why an earth do I apologize to them for this?