Handwritten letters vs typed emails for keeping in touch with my brother

After my brother moved to Austin last spring, I tried emailing him weekly and got short replies, but when I switched to writing actual letters on paper, he started sending back multi-page updates with drawings in the margins. It turns out the slower pace makes him actually sit down and think before he writes, and I found myself noticing small details about my own week that I would have skipped in an email. Has anyone else found that a slower medium changes how much people open up, or is it just my brother being weird?

2 comments

2 Comments

anthony4244d ago

Consider the artifacts themselves, the physical trail of your shared history. Emails vanish into an endless scroll, they get buried and forgotten, but letters become a little archive on your shelf, a stack of evidence that your relationship has weight to it. That paper trail makes the conversation feel more real and more permanent, so it makes sense your brother treats it with more care. He's not just replying, he's building something you can hold in your hands. It's like the difference between a text and a photo album, one you skim and one you actually sit with.

ellis.susan4d ago

You're romanticizing the whole paper trail thing, but a pile of letters is just clutter that takes up space and eventually gets tossed. Emails are searchable, always there when you need them, and honestly, the weight of a relationship is in the conversations, not the medium it happens on.