Pen vs. Email: Which One to Choose?

When I looked at the prompt for this assignment, I had a hard time thinking of whom I would write to. I thought I would email the close relative and then write the long-handed letter to someone I had not heard from in quite some time.
The email that I wrote was to my aunt in California. She lives nears Yosemite National Park in a house surrounded by tall trees and a river running behind her house. The reason I decided to email her is because she is eventually going to move to Mississippi and I didn’t know quite when that is going to happen. I have become almost too familiar with the process of emailing. It is so easy to log onto my Gmail account, click Compose, write the message, then click send and the message is on its way just like that.
“Snail mail” is another process entirely. I had forgotten how therapeutic it is to right a letter to a friend. It took me quite a bit longer to write the letter because I had to choose my words much more carefully.
The friend I choose was one who lives on the Oregon Coast in Oretown, a small community between Lincoln City and Pacific City. I first met him years ago, and regretfully it had been a long time since I had talked with him. We used to stay over at each other’s houses during the summer when we were younger. He was a year younger, but we each had lots in common. Somehow, we have gone through a long time without a phone call or an email. Its funny how so people can be good friends at one point in time, then there lives go in opposite directions and its anybody’s guess to when you will see them again. I told him about how I was in college, but had decided to choose speech communication as my major. We both dreamed of becoming sports broadcasters when we were growing up. He had recently been hired on as the sports editor at a Tillamook newspaper. With me still in college, its funny at what pace people’s lives will move along. He graduated in four years and I will graduate after seven. Once I was finished with the letter, I felt as though I had accomplished something worthwile, as opposed to just typing thoughtlessly on a keyboard.
There is a quote on page 101 of the Wood and Smith text that talks about the Internet. “The Internet is so big, so powerful and pointless, that for some people it is a complete substitute for life.” This rang scarily true for me. Sometimes when life seems like it can’t get any worse, which doesn’t happen too often thankfully, I find myself online, just wasting time until I feel I am over whatever is bugging me.
After this assignment I will continue to write letters as a way to get away from technology and get back to the simple pleasures in life. In our society we are always looking for the quick resolution to a problem, or a way to get more done during the day in our hectic lives. Writing a letter is one way to slow life down and connect with something that might have been missing for a while.