In 2021–my senior year of high school–a friend approached me in the hall at school one day and told me about Basecamp’s (now called 37signals) email service, HEY. They knew I get and digest a ton of emails daily, and was feeling overwhelmed with the amount of crap entering my “Inbox.” They also knew I was sad that Google discontinued Inbox by Gmail in 2019. I used it from 2015 until the year it shut down.

I took one look at the HEY marketing website, and knew it was made for me. I watched the demo video with Jason Fried twice. I immediately switched my domain’s email services over to HEY in class from my iPhone. I canceled my G Suite subscription with Google, which happened to be up for renewal in like three days.

I used HEY for a few months, even after I graduated high school. I’d actually ask people to email me through my HEY-based email address instead of my school’s Microsoft-based email address for things because the app was so much faster than Outlook. (Worth noting, while I was an iPhone power user at the time–I was absolutely naive and unaware of any the issues HEY had getting onto the App Store. At least Apple’s behavior is common knowledge nowadays.)

With the help of my then-English teacher, I drafted a very lengthy letter to the founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. I don’t think I have a copy of that message anymore (I doubt they have it, either), but it went over what I loved, what I didn’t love, and some feedback. I don’t remember if anyone wrote back. They probably did. Three years was a long time ago, and I’m a different Slade now.

That summer, I moved back to Google Workspace for a number of reasons. Even less than a year in (at the time I first switched), HEY had an adjustment I couldn’t shake for some reason. Something felt off. I couldn’t put my finger on it, so I decided to walk away for a bit and give myself some time.

Fast forward to this past year, and I realized I really, really missed HEY. Gmail was too chaotic. I went from being on top of my inbox to being behind. My grandma passed in July, and I took a couple months off to process everything, and came back to my email and had to take an even worse mess. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

So I cancelled Google Workspace and switched back a bit ago. And my inbox has never been tamer. I still get a lot of chaos hitting my email, but it’s controlled chaos. Look, I hate change. I struggle with severe anxiety and prefer structure. But HEY changed me. I’m still running into things on HEY that make me go “that’s different! I like that.” and the anxiety I have over new things isn’t there. That has never happened before.

There are still things about HEY that irk me, but I feel that it has improved enough that it doesn’t bother me so much. It’s just the little things now. Doubt the co-founders are reading, but I’d definitely love to provide feedback to either of them. I kid you not, I have a whole notes document full of ideas! It’d be really cool to help improve things.

For now, I’m just going to keep loving different.