Does anyone have experience exchanging actual letters with a pen pal?
I'll be brief. A friend of mine told me about an Android app called Slowly, which simulates sending letters to people around the world with a time delay representing their distance. I answered that I probably would rather send actual letters instead. I installed Slowly but it is a hellhole of gamification and aggressive monetization. So I went back to the idea of just sending letters to people that I write on paper. I am new to this and several websites exist to facilitate finding pen pals. One of them, Global Penfriends, also has an internal messaging system, which I felt kinda misses the point? Anyway, I think that might be a great inexpensive hobby but I have no idea where to begin with. Some websites have premium tiers too, but it is not clear if this is something I would need.
Any suggestions?
As a teenager in an AOL chat room I met someone who claimed to be a girl from California and actually turned out to be a girl from California. We would chat online almost daily, and then when I was leaving to work at summer camp I gave her the camp address in case she wanted to write, and ended up exchanging a bunch of letters back and forth. We became pretty good friends, as far as online things go, over the next few years. She lamented her unrequited love for a male friend of hers, I told her about my unrequited love for a female friend of mine. We were pretty high on each other's list of people to tell about any major life events, both good and bad.
Eventually we kind of drifted apart, and the mass exodus from AOL didn't help with that. We talked once a few years later, and she told me that the night before her wedding she had sent me a long email, but it had gone to my old and unchecked AOL address and I never saw it, nor did she tell me what it had said. I looked her up on Facebook recently and sent a friend request, but after the initial "what have you been up to?" chat there hasn't really been a reason to keep the conversation going. I guess sometimes the past is supposed to stay in the past.
What a bittersweet, beautiful story, full of interesting gaps for us to wonder about. Thank you for sharing this.
I write physical letters to friends—just like they did in the dark ages! This is part of my ongoing effort to live in the real world. Handwritten letters are quaint, and personalizing the letter and envelope adds a touch that a digital version probably can't ever offer. I sometimes include small print-outs or clippings I think they'd like. Lacking the ability to re-read my past sent messages discourages me from excessively overanalyzing, which probably means more authentic and less awkward conversations on both ends. I keep all the letters I receive and have far more emotional attachment to them than any email derivative.
The idea of artificially simulating the time delay of a letter in the mail is so Tildes-coded. If you're trying to connect with far-off strangers, you might have more fun chatting with people at a nearby train station, international airport, or tourist site. If you hit it off, you can pitch the pen pal idea. Since they'd be visiting your country already, you might have quite a bit in common, so perhaps they'd be more interesting or diligent pen pals than folks trying it purely as a novelty.
I have a friend who recently moved off social media. I just started writing her letters. It is unbelievably difficult, to sit and just write. It is hard to remember when I used to do that... simply for fun.
Comfort in stillness, or silence, seems to be an element of overcoming that difficulty.
Society conceives of idleness as an opportunity cost and defines “less-than-overload” as idle. On Tildes, we talk about this as an effect of capitalistic work culture, which is useful but deflects the internal psychological component (also a learned behavior). We are discomforted by our own thoughts, annoyed with boredom, impatient, and unwilling to rectify perceived boredom with imagination or reflection. The progressive discourse rightly identifies social media as an enabler of this discomfort. I would clarify that social media “enables” an extant desire for constant activity, even as it also amplifies our dependence on itself; and said extant desire is learned through other or additional social practices. It’s encompassing.
Over years, I’ve accustomed myself to extended worship in the manner of Friends: contemplative, gathered listening (waiting) for teachings of the spirit. This could be several hours of focus punctuated by messages to consider. However, it is more of a lifestyle and worldview than an activity. My decision to accept simplicity puts me in a better position to engage in thoughtful life. Writing letters has become easier in that way. Of course I am still challenged by distraction, and there are other reasons it’s hard to write.
Years ago back on reddit, I wanted to have an excuse/motivation to make more art, so I thought it would be fun to have an art pen pal. I managed to find someone who was interested (I think on r/penpals) and we would write prompts for each other and then make original artwork in response to send via snail mail. It was fun at first but didn't last long, maybe 3 exchanges before it peetered out :/
I'd definitely be interested in doing this again, but I think it's hard to keep people interested and engaged between strangers, especially if there are so many competing priorities (for attention) in their immediate life.
I've used and enjoyed SendSomething, PostCrossing, and r/RandomActsofCards. SendSomething feels the most personal and is probably my favorite.
If you get into it, you might also enjoy letterlocking. Have fun!
...i had a south korean penpal back in 1986 or `87; kind of a random program in which our honors english class participated...as noted above, sustaining the dialog was perennially challenging...
I find the idea of sending artificial letters online rather obscene, I am not sure why. If it makes people happy, more power to them, but I personally would never indulge myself into doing so.
As for sending physical mail to a pen pal(s), I have certainly thought about it. I write quite a lot. I have great interest, and collection, of fountain pens and inks so maybe I am trying to justify their existence, but I enjoy the experience of writing with them. I keep up with my personal diary and a poem diary, which I recently started, but I never write to anyone.
A couple of months ago I researched how feasible it’d be to find people to exchange letters with, but none of the options felt right to me. I think the one I liked the most was r/prisonpenpals, but it didn’t feel right for a couple of reasons. Other than that, I liked r/FountainPenPals, but I thought I wouldn’t belong there with my horrible (well, not horrible, but not noteworthy either) handwriting. Generally speaking though, I think the biggest hurdle is to find something to talk about. I have many hobbies that I can write hours on end, but not everyone’s receptive to that, and outside of those hobbies, I don’t particularly have an exciting life.
As you can see, there are lots of reasons to not do something.
My partner (Australian) and I (American) were online friends for years before we met in person for the first time. We sent each other physical letters on occasion, but mostly to send each other physical things (though we also always included a long letter) since we mostly communicated by email.
I like to collect coins, so we mailed each other all the coins in our respective currencies. I think I sent him some Mexican and Canadian coins, too, and he sent me some New Zealand coins.
I'm kind of a geometry nerd, so he also made me a little dodecahedron out of wood.
We ended up falling in love while we still only knew each other online, so meeting for the first time after being penpals for so long was a pretty surreal experience.
Apart from that, my sister and I have been thinking about getting into sending each other physical letters. There are some writing-prompt games where you play as fictional characters and write each other letters, and we were thinking that could be fun.