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?
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.