Chasing Analog

In pursuit of my word of the year

Yesterday I had the best opening paragraph written in my mind, but I was driving, and so now it’s gone.

I didn’t voice text it into my phone; instead, I watched the sunlight stream through the curving highway, forest, and farms on my right, my beloved Lake Michigan on my left.

Analog

I put my watch on at the beginning of this year, my big effort towards 'analog’, and I’ve read a little more, have spent a little more time with paper and pen, but I still ‘reward’ myself with doom scrolling at the end of the day, contradicting myself with every swipe of my finger.

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Turning fifty last July was a fun novelty. It felt fabulous and strong. Fifty-one on the horizon? Not so much. It feels dull on my best days and like a death sentence on my worst. How is life screaming past so quickly, and why would I want to spend any of it doom scrolling? If my thoughts and prayers are constantly towards things like the future my children will live in, and their precious brains and brain-rotting algorithms…

Why am I still partaking myself?

I’ve always prided myself on boundaries with my phone. The overstimulation of bings and bongs was never good for me. I knew that right out of the gate. I’m quietly offended when someone’s phone dings or whistles. My lack of capacity for the racket gives me a haughty sense of pride. And though I am guilty myself, I’m sure, when someone holds their phone while talking to me or glances down at it, I want to rip it out of their hands and smash it with my marble rolling pin. It hurts my feelings.

My ringer is never on (to my husband’s annoyance), and my notifications only ding when my kids text.

If the rest of the world needs me, they can bloody wait.

I leave it in the other room on purpose and do not take it to the bathroom with me (most of the time:)

But lately, it’s not enough.

With fifty-one on the horizon and God-willing many more years after that, my desire for an old-school, analog, drink-from-the-garden-hose kind of life gets stronger every day.

Yes, lately I’m craving an even healthier relationship with the technological world in which I earn a living.

I want to lick a 22-cent stamp.

I want to wind my finger in the curly-cue phone cord while I dance around in place, attached to the wall.

I want to stroll the VHS aisle again with my husband on our way to pick up a well-done pepperoni pizza.

I want to ride my bike down the street and ask a friend if they want to 'play’.

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What are these habits I want to shed?

I check my email ten times a day. Out of boredom? A need for validation? I don’t even know. I rarely get exciting emails. :)

I doom scroll funny reels in the bathtub. Is that bad? Not necessarily, but we all know I open Instagram a lot more than that.

And ChatGPT?

At first I was horrified with the idea. Then I tried it to help with my language lessons, and it was pretty darn handy. Then I used it to assemble my kid’s homeschool curriculum, and it was a train wreck we are still digging out of.

Is it useful?

Absolutely. And I use it for business a few times a week, trying to be ever mindful of its psychophantic tendencies. But beyond that? I would say it’s got a poisonous siren call for someone like me who gets a high on mass quantities of information. A question asked here… a question asked there… seemed harmless at first until it was clearly another reason to grab my phone… “just to check something.”

The thought of people using it for friendship or parents giving a teddy bear to a child with a chat buddy inside makes me want to pack up my entire family and run to Innisfree and manage my nine bean rows.

I drove past the new A.I. site on my way to Chicago the other day, and I truly thought I was going to throw up. To say it gave me the creeps would diminish the toxic feeling I felt to my bones as we passed. It has to be a half-mile-long construction site fenced off in a ten-foot wall of blue plastic. The ground was being scraped away, and there were big, strange panels of green lights. It was out of a science fiction movie.

I’ve never, ever seen anything like it.

Did we say we wanted to live in a world like this where beautiful lake water will be used to cool off computers that create attachment syndromes to robotic teddy bears for our children?

I’ve taken ChatGPT off my phone.

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Today marks the beginning of Lent.

I typically, quietly remove one thing that I really enjoy from my routine for the Lenten season. I do this with simplicity at its heart, not out of penance or anything doctrinally complex, but simply because when I think of that removed thing during the day, then I think of what Christ has done for me. It’s nothing more complex than that. At the end of Lent, I resume the wine, or Netflix or chocolate or whatever…

But this year on the first day of Lent, I’ve taken those ‘slot machine apps’, those high dopamine-feedback-loop apps, off my phone, and for now, I don’t think I’ll go back. If only, to set what feels like a losing example for my family.

All I do is write about a beautiful life on this Substack, and I’m ready to take the next step towards more beauty.

My life, and perhaps yours too, has some significant challenges, and it’s embarrassing to admit that I knowingly partake in things that cause my brain and countenance to struggle all the while knowing I need both mental sharpness, mental peace, and creativity to attend to this life I have been given well.

So-

If I need to check my email, I will sit at my desk for a few minutes like a grown-up.

And when I post on Instagram or check my DMs, it will be at my desk as well.

As a mother, I hate sitting at my desk. It’s the physical act of having my back to my kids that fills me with guilt. But where was my guilt for a head pointed down to a hand-held screen fifteen times a day?

I’m blessed to have a job where sharing creativity and beauty matters… I just won’t be walking around with my phone in hand to do it anymore.