Slowly letter gets Fastly replies. DM to rescue.

November 12, 2020

Earlier this morning I received a Slowly letter from a really good friend across the Ocean. I had seen it coming, and was glad they had written.

Good people are always missed, and this is now one of my closest contacts; delightful as together with a couple of others, they fill my heart with joy at our shared communication, and salve the hurt of the missing, departed friends no longer in the Slowlyverse.

It was early, dark. I woke up, and knew sleep wouldn't resume instantly, so came down and drank some water, then grabbed the phone for a quick check.

That is less committing for me than opening the real tool, my sleeping workhorse, the laptop I so enjoy and were all my work you see is produced. The one I am typing in now. 🙂

Looked around and the Reddit app on the phone yielded a FREE Award, which I looked forward to (and check if available); those I use to honour one of the nice posts in our SlowlyApp subReddit.

Reddit check done, next...

Quick look at Slowly, and there's their letter, just arrived. My finger drifted over, while I scanned the first bits of text displayed in the preview mail. It touched the screen, on it's on more or less (it's 3 am, understandable).

And now the full letter displayed. Ooops.

You see, I have a habit, of not opening a letter, until I am ready to reply to it. Immediately. And once you open the letter, there is no Undo, unmark my 'letter read' check mark. Ooooh.

Given that, it meant I was in to read it, at least; it's already marked 'Read'.

I did, and it was a wonderful letter, poignant, well written, touching. And I would reply now, 3 am or not.

So I did. The laptop was summoned, it opened up and showed me a new lovely Bing landscape photo (one of my loved aspects of Windows 10, which works well for me).

Penpal folder loaded, Slowly Web Mode is always open and ready here, for me there's no other way to work. 😉

Direct Channel can be a Positive

My good friend is someone I have contact in some other channel, one that allows us to send Direct Messages. Unlike many people's, ours tend to be longer and not single line, SMS style.

I went in, and started typing a DM to them – and wanted to share with all of you how this CAN be a boon and helpful to a good Slowly friendship.

My message flowed, in a few blocks, a paragraph each; I am copying the letter below. Lightly edited for privacy reasons, but mostly intact.

A response soon arrived, equally well written and sincere, thankful for my prompt reply – no Slowly delay this time.

Sometimes Fastly is the way to go.

My letter to them is below; I will not publish the follow ups due to very private content we shared. But be assured that having some kind of Direct Messaging like we have on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or at Reddit CAN be useful, positive and enrich a partnership primarily centered on the 'slower stream'.

Thank you for reading so far. I hope you enjoy this piece, which I will be copying and pasting on my Blog, as it clearly is appropriate to that medium.

Any comments are MOST welcome, contact details in the page footer. Thank you.

Fastly Reply Letter Follows.

Hello friend, good morning.

I wanted to say I received and read immediately your letter, it just arrived and I was happy to see it coming. I was very touched by it, and wanted to let you know that now. Will be replying to it, with priority, it touches on things I had been thinking about. We all go thru different stages in our use of the app, and I can really understand what you explained you felt, and how difficult it is to have to close connections with some people. I did that recently too, although it was by finally removing some long inactive people, in some cases. But in one case in particular, it was more delicate, and I had thought of mentioning it to you as we both have the same contact.

This one, I sent a final letter via a Direct Message also; it was written in my text editor, and polite, explaining how I felt. We had some excellent cooperation in the past, mostly via social media, and some good letters as well. I felt things were not going well, and wrote to explain that and propose we ended our Slowly correspondence. I have posted comments mentioning this, and even a veiled reference to this parting — without mentioning any names or personally identifiable details.

I don't mind longer letters, and don't keep track of word count, only in special cases I do copy and paste into WordCounter.net if I am curious on size. But the incoming letters had been quite difficult for me – not only in length, but in the form they were written.

Apologies for this, which is turning into a real letter, split into those DM pieces, but I wanted to reach you quickly, and to tell you I felt the emotions in your letter. I had been a bit worried and thinking on how you were handling the volume of mail. Taking off the ID from your user profile was good, I need to write a topic sometime about this — Managing the Load.

I have felt the weight of pending letters, at a time when I was concentrating in other things (writing prolifically in the blog, for example), and it's not good. I took a month off Slowly back in June to give run to my inspiration, and produced a lot of good pieces. Inspiration comes in waves, and I think best to give it time and realize the potential of new work getting done; as that phase soon changes, and other things become more in focus.

Thank you for your letters, they bring me joy.

A reply letter will come, this was sent on the intent of not adding to the pending list in Slowly, and the anxiety it causes.

Have a good day, dear friend.

Yann.

Famous Last Words

Special thank you to all the folks behind the SLOWLY app.

Letters we share, with pen pals all over the world. A modern day take in the traditional penpal experience. Come and join us, using SLOWLY.

Follow Blog via your Fediverse/Mastodon account :

This page created in MarkDown language. Thank you for reading, feel free to comment, via a direct message to my Twitter account – or the Reddit one.

You can also post a public comment in the Reddit thread for it here.

yann2@bsky.social Top ▲