How long does it take for a letter to be delivered?
I’ve written letters to my friend when I was small, and I used to spend hours choosing the perfect stamp for the letter. I would check the mail box daily to see if I get a letter back, counting the days that should take for a letter to arrive from her place to mine. We’ve exchanged a few letters back then, but eventually the letters that we wrote to each other became lesser and lesser, until the number became zero.
I never had a friend who writes letters to me since then.
The truth is, with communication and social media apps being so well developed these days, many people wouldn’t spend the time to sit down and write to someone because the whole process takes a lot of time. On top of that, it takes time to deliver the message to someone. Why should we choose to write letters when we can just use our phones to send messages and get a reply the second our messages is sent? I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the instant reply from my friends after sending them hilarious videos, or the joy of spamming them stickers and laugh at the replies and looks of my friends. But people are getting more and more impatient and it seemed like we lost the ability to appreciate something that takes time— such as writing letters.
I discovered Slowly from a recommendation in AppStore and it still remains the best app AppStore has ever recommended to me. I’ve been a Slowly user for more than a year now, and I’ve just reached the achievement of writing over 500 letters. I’ve met loads of amazing people from all over the globe: Philippines, Brazil, America, Turkey, Indonesia, South Africa… I’ve never even dreamed of meeting so many people from so many countries before I become a user in Slowly.
I’ve always been the weird kid who sucks at starting conversations and it usually ends up with the person that I want to talk to staring at me as if I’ve suddenly grown a second head. But writing letters requires patience, and you get to think thrice before writing something down. When I wrote my first letter I could literally remember the whole thing because I’ve been editing it for so many times, and I still remember the indescribable joy when someone sent a letter to me— I spent a week thinking of a decent reply that would sound witty and interesting, and ended up writing an extra short letter because I didn’t know what to reply. I’ve written to someone and it was double ticked but that person never replied, and some of my closest pen pals left and deleted the app after months of writing; but I’d always remember the first-times I’ve experienced in Slowly. It’s a unique experience and downloading the app still remains one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
One special feature in Slowly is that letters take time to arrive. It makes the whole process more realistic and being as impatient as I’ve always been, there were times I checked the app and refreshing the page every five minutes, hoping the arrival time of the letter would miraculously become zero. Of course, that never happens and I’ve actually become more patient after a year of waiting the arrival of the letters— something that I thought I’d never achieve. Time flies, and I’ve become more confident when writing in English (that’s actually one of the reasons I downloaded Slowly, because I thought it would be a kill-two-birds-with-one-stone place where I get to practice my English and talk to somebody about topics that I like). I still can’t believe it has only been a year since I’ve joined Slowly as I felt like writing here forever, and the users here are friendly and amazing.
A month ago, I’ve met my favourite pen pal and we’ve been writing each other letters ever since. She’s the best and is always there when I needed someone to talk to, and we wrote extremely long letters to each other talking about everything’s that’s on our minds, from our school lives to our problems to debating why human beings exist. Every time when Slowly tells me that a letter from her is arriving I keep checking the app to see if the letter would miraculously arrive hours earlier than the assigned time, and writing her a reply as soon as I received her letter. I wouldn’t have met her if this app never existed, so I’m going to leave a big THANK YOU here to the developers of Slowly.
Thank you for making this amazing app. I’ve been told fascinating stories, received adorable doggy pics and beautiful pictures of landscapes, learnt about cultures from other countries, even learning random words in other languages— such as ‘hola’ , which means ‘hi’ in Spanish.
THANK YOU FOR MAKING THESE HAPPEN.
