Notes from an analog life
Notes from an analog life
Ways we resist the digital age
By
fromRuth Gaskovski put a call out this summer for people to share the ways they live differently in the digital age, so I thought I’d participate. I think it’s so helpful and interesting to know how other people are living, especially when those ways are countercultural. It can be inspiring, and it can help people feel less weird and alone.
I’ve lived a pretty analog life for as long as I can remember. This isn’t to make some sort of statement; it’s really just my preference. Technology stresses me out; I like simple and human.
My husband is the same way. One time I filmed us trying to figure out how to play music in our new-to-us vehicle and shared it to my Instagram stories because I knew it would probably get some laughs. We were very annoyed to find out that this car had no CD player like our old Honda Fit, so we had to try to figure out the bluetooth or whatever.
(We struggled. It did get laughs.)
We are just not very tech-savvy, mostly because we’re not that drawn to the digital life. This has continued as we’ve had children.
With that, here are 10 ways we live a simple-ish, analog life.
1. TVs have a marginal presence in our home.
We have no TV in our main living room; instead, we have furniture around a circular rug. Our living room is for sitting and chatting. We have a TV downstairs in our family room, but we do not have cable, and it is only on when we’re actively watching something. We ride bikes, hang in the yard, play board games, do puzzles, read, talk.
2. We still use DVDs and CDs.
I actually have no idea who else does this and am slightly panicked that this admission will mean we’re weirder than I thought, but here we go. We have a great collection of CDs from our younger days and we play them. (We do use streaming some for music, of course.) I look for movies on DVD at garage sales and thrift stores, and we have a great little collection of family-friendly films I’ve curated over the years that are free to watch and readily available!
3. We don’t have Wi-fi.
We have our Internet hardwired. We do have a modem and router, but we choose to use physical cables to access the Internet instead of a Wi-fi connection. Because of no Wi-fi, we also don’t have Alexa or any other AI woman to help run our home. I’ll admit, I’m often a bit jealous when I see this in action in others’ homes, but it’s just not something we do.
4. We don’t use baby monitors.
We started out using simple audio ones, but quickly found that we just didn’t need them. It was just one more thing. We’ve always lived in smaller homes where we could hear and check in easily if need be. We also don’t really use gadgets for our kids—the amazing ergonomic Baby Bjorn bouncer is pretty much it.
5. Our kids don’t have tablets.
I imagine tablets can be integrated thoughtfully into a life, and I may get one this year for limited use with homeschooling. But to date, our big girls (ages 8 and 6) haven’t had access to a tablet. Do I sometimes let them draw on the Notes app on my phone or watch PBS kids? Yes, I do. But in general, as I mentioned in point 1, we try to engage in non-digital activity. They love audiobooks, which I stream from the public library app on my phone to a speaker (we do have two portable Bluetooth speakers for this purpose and for music).
6. I have cookbooks and printed-out recipes.
I really like my recipes to be tangible. I like to write on them, and I like to have them physically sitting right there as I cook. I realized I was driven crazy by trying to look on my phone at a recipe, so now I never do. We have a printer, and I print out recipes. Then I put them into page protectors that go into a binder.
7. I use a wall/paper calendar.
We have a whiteboard calendar that I keep updated for the family, and I have a week-to-week pad of paper I use to keep track of life in more detail. I’ll admit, I think this needs to shift as my husband and I have realized as our kids get older that we both need to be able to access and add to the calendar more easily (he works outside the home). I told him, you figure it all out and we can do that :) I just really like to write things down on physical paper. When things live in the digital cloud world, it feels harder for me. I need to see it. I do use my Notes app for lists on the go, but the major tracking happens analog.
8. We have print copies of books.
We have massive amount of both adult and kid physical books in our home. I don’t do e-readers or even really audiobooks despite reading a lot, and my kids have only recently started doing audiobooks. We recently had a friend build wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in our downstairs family room. (Best project ever.) I can totally understand the appeal of e-readers and audiobooks, and I’ll probably make the jump at some point (a little tired of hauling four books on every trip, lol), but I absolutely love books I can hold in my hands. They feel sacred to me.
9. My husband has a flip phone.
My husband has had a flip phone for over a year now, and he really likes it. He says he feels much more present in his life and I’d agree that he is. He wasn’t big on phone use before, but he would sit and scroll when stressed or tired as we all do and he didn’t like that, but it wasn’t a big jump. As I said to Katie Marquette recently, it does make me feel guilty (iPhone 14 here). I, too, would like the life of a dumb phone user. But it just doesn’t seem practical for me at this point in time, and that’s ok. Maybe someday.
10. I try to stay human online.
I’ve been writing on the Internet for about a decade, and I try to stay human while still growing my body of work and reaching new readers. On Instagram, I don’t do what the algorithm wants me to do (ahem reels) because I like the vibe of pictures or static posts with words. I don’t think of people as numbers or an infinite resource to exploit and I’m ok with slow growth. I resist the urge to be sharp in comments sections. I love talking with people one-on-one via DM (many conversation of which have turned into friendships and even gone over to Voxer or text). I put people over ideas in my real life and try to do the same online, since everyone on the Internet is, as it turns out, a human being. (Except the bots or whatever.)
I’ve realized as I write this that a lot of these things might seem to someone like “more work,” but it truly doesn’t feel that way to me. Analog life feels good to me. It feels straightforward, simple. And I’m not anti-technology. I like my iPhone, and I wrote just the other day about my love for automatic soap dispensers. I just prefer a life that’s mostly grounded in the physical, tangible world.
I would be lying if I said I didn’t also think of dystopian novels like Brave New World where technology has made everything infinitely more efficient and easier, and… well if you’ve read it you know how that turned out. I do think some resistance is in order, but I do not desire to try to live outside of reality.
I’m looking forward to reading more of the stories and examples that Ruth collects, and be sure to follow her work if you’re interested, too!
What about you? Where are you on the digital/analog spectrum? Where do you love your technology and where are you totally in on the old-fashioned way? I’d love to hear.
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