Going Totally Analog

 Leaving the site up as archive.  Thanks for the connection -- especially all those actual letters in my post office box!

I will not be updating this blog.

Mindful Twitter

Analog, through Twitter?

 

The pandemic has been hard for digital minimalists.  

Even "going back to normal" hasn't really been normal with repeat infections from a brain-shrinking, immune system-destroying, clot-forming virus that is still out of control. Many of us are still somewhat hunkered-down, masked, avoiding crowds. Those of us who can work remotely are at home most of the time. Some who are back in offices or public settings choose to spend non-working hours mostly at home because getting Covid sucks. Sometimes it continues to suck in ways that have nothing to do with an acute phase of coughing or a runny nose. Just ask the many who ended up with post-Covid heart problems or Long Covid, who are now trying to prevent getting infected again.

It's easy to understand why people have turned to social media as a way to connect. 

It's a lonely pandemic. Sometimes our screens are wonderful virtual campfires. But, just like in the before-times, the ever-flashing screen is addictive, and it can become a source of bad news, misinformation and countless displays of the very worst humanity has to offer.  

Have an Old-school New Year!

Get off Zoom and find some outdoor space...

It's been a long, strange pandemic, and it's ramping up for another act.  Join me as I try to stay sane, stay safe, stop doomscrolling and ride out the latest Covid wave.  Stay tuned for more.

Let's Have a Vinyl Listening Party...

If we were at my house, I'd make you a drink.

Check out the entire Unlocked Recordings Archive 

Brought to us by the beloved, madcap archivists at The Internet Archive

by Laurie Allee

So, I did something crazy when I was in my 20s.  When my roommate decided to move to Boston, I agreed to help her drive her truck across country from Los Angeles.  She planned  to sell most of her stuff before making the trek, and since I was also in flux -- and broke -- I added a few things to her yard sale to make some extra money.

Selling my jerky ex-boyfriend's leather jacket he never bothered to pick up was a no-brainer.  Selling jeans I no longer wore and jewelry I never really liked?  Obvious.  But selling my record collection...

Great Use of Screen Time: Jose Briones and Digital Minimalism

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by Laurie Allee

Must Watch for Digital Minimalists

Watch Jose's interview with Joe Hollier,
creator of the Light Phone 2 

The ironic part about living a life less digitally saturated is that by conscientiously spending time offline you can miss out on some great fellow travellers.  Jose Briones is well worth your screen time.

I first discovered Jose when I was researching dumb phones.  I was struggling with the incessant temptation of my iPhone, and I wondered if there was an alternative that would allow me to stay connected without getting sucked into an endless vortex of scrolling, likes and retweets.  Jose's channel is the perfect one-stop clearinghouse of detailed reviews, with plenty of explanations and demonstrations of the user experience.  If you are shopping for a phone that won't own you, Jose's channel will definitely help you make an informed decision.  He will point you toward some devices I guarantee you have not heard of before.  

Analog Things: Art Journals

My art journals...

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by Laurie Allee

Making your own illuminated manuscripts...

Okay, so maybe they don't rival these illuminated manuscripts, but art journals have taken my regular blank books to a whole different level.  They've also given me a meditative practice that I look forward to doing.  Illustrating my journals adds another layer of creativity to my life, and provides a great alternative to scrolling on my phone.

Analog Things: Making Art

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by Laurie Allee

Here Be Dragons:  The Magic and Wonder of Nerdforge

I am a little bit controversial in the digital minimalism space.  While a life with almost no screen time is admirable, I'm not a neo-Luddite.  My life analog means using all the tools at my disposal to spend the majority of my time getting my hands dirty in the real world rather than scrolling mindlessly through hashtags and Instagram stories.  I'm happy to use the internet to make my real life better.  (Hint:  I'm blogging right now, not writing with a quill on parchment.) (Although I like to do that too.) If you do it right, your screen time can lead to remarkable real time.  

Case in point...

Great Use of Screen Time: Study With Merve

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by Laurie Allee

Must-watch...studying?!

Let's say you're at a film pitch meeting and you're trying to convince producers that you've got a workable idea:

"There's this Scottish student, okay?  And they have this YouTube Channel where all they do is point an HD camera at a desk and out of the window where they, like, study alone for up to 7 hours.  You never see anything except their hands as they write in notebooks and check a laptop. They've got over 201,000 subscribers and people join the live streams from all over the world to study with the videos and everyone has developed a camaraderie in the comment section..." 

Yeah, I don't think you're getting that movie funded.

But here's where truth really is stranger than fiction...

Instead of Social Media: Log Into Nature Livestreams...

 

Hang out at the Banzai Pipeline surf break on the north shore of Oahu

Livestream hours: dawn to just after sunset, Hawaii time

by Laurie Allee

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Seeing the World Despite Travel Restrictions

     Finding the analog in the digital 

Readers of this blog know that I have a love/hate relationship with technology.  Before COVID-19, I felt like I was living in some kind of Matrix where everyone was willingly plugged into devices, ignoring each other while staring hour after hour into endlessly scrolling screens.  I basically started this blog as a kind of rebellion against my phone.  I dedicated myself a life more tactile and less digital. I unplugged to get my hands dirty and "sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world" -- or to at least avoid the toxic political howling on Twitter. 

Analog Things: Building a Cabin by Hand

Meet Erik Grankvist...modern Viking builder

by Laurie Allee

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No Power Tools (or Nails) Allowed.

Covid-19 restrictions have given people inspiration to do things they might not have had the time or inclination to do before lockdowns.  I was feeling pretty great about my own self-isolation activities:  learning the dulcimer, experimenting with Prismacolor art pencils and tackling the classic books I'd never gotten around to reading.  Not bad, right?  No mega-scrolling, no Twitter ranting, just good old-fashioned analog activities, even in the midst of a pandemic...

Then I found out about Erik Grankvist.

Analog Things: The Mountain Dulcimer

 

Jeff Hames rocks the mountain dulcimer 

by Laurie Allee

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Are you looking for an acoustic instrument that is highly portable, easy-to-learn, inexpensive and capable of creating absolutely beautiful music?  Look no further than the mountain dulcimer.  This unassuming little instrument has been known by a variety of names: lap dulcimer, Appalachian dulcimer, Kentucky dulcimer, "dulcymore," harmonium, harmony box and (my favorite) hog fiddle.  Traditional to the southern Appalachian mountains of the US, this stringed instrument is one of the easiest to play.  Essentially a fretted zither, it commonly has three or four strings and can be played by plucking or strumming with a pick.

And it sounds AMAZING.

 

Unplugging as a Political Act

by Laurie Allee

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Doomscrolling

As I write this, the president of the United States is probably adding another tweet to his ongoing, stream-of-consciousness tone poem in a frenzy that makes Kerouac's "spontaneous prose" look downright mellow by comparison.

For your sanity's sake, don't be like the president.

When Real Life is Virtual...

by Laurie Allee

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Together Apart
     Finding the analog in the digital

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I have a love/hate relationship with technology.  The last few years have made me feel like I'm living inside a dystopian technocracy, where people have been mindlessly sucked into screens, where tech billionaires determine what we see and how we see it, where real life is superseded by social media with everyone corralled into digital echo chambers, crouched behind their highly-filtered avatars.  

Views From The New Normal

by Laurie Allee

In what has to be the biggest irony of 2020 for me, the very digital devices that were causing so much isolation, distraction and harmful addiction are now the ones bringing us closer together, helping us focus our goals and protecting us from illness.  The internet, in a way, has become humanity's central nervous system, and our devices are a lifeline to the in-person world now largely out of reach.  

I'm not even sure when the crisis is past that we will ever go back to eschewing real life for online simulation.  Something profound and life-changing is happening as a side effect of this global pandemic, revolutionary uprising and financial crisis.   We're finding out how much we really need each other.  We're realizing the scope of our structural failures, demanding not only justice but a complete system overhaul.  We're seeing how much more fragile, transient and brief this time on earth turns out to be.   

Instead of removing us from real life, our devices are now keeping us in touch with what's real.  

Digital technology is the new Analog.  

More thoughts on this coming soon.

Analog in the time of COVID19... Coming Soon

by Laurie Allee

The coronavirus crisis has changed the way we live our lives, making onscreen connection often our only connection with friends and family not huddled inside with us.

I've been thinking about this.

Stay tuned.  New post, videos and ideas coming late spring/early summer, 2020.  In the mean time, take care of your health -- physical and mental.  Safely seek natural surroundings, sunlight and simple things.  Reach out to loved ones in your home as well as those we can now see only through technology.  Make sure to avoid internet overload and despair. 

I'll be back.

Trees that Hug Back

By Laurie Allee

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Celebrating the many benefits of forest bathing...

Occasionally I stumble upon something so obvious it seems revolutionary:

In a tech dystopia, we need to connect more with trees.  

Maybe you can relate...

Away from Keyboard: Embracing Slow Tech

by Laurie Allee

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So I've been offline a lot in the last few weeks.  While I think I can say I've successfully relegated my phone back to the status of a phone instead of a tiny monitor that never leaves the palm of my hand, I still feel the siren call of the internet when I'm working on my computer.  

And I have to work on my computer.  

Disconnecting to Reconnect

by Laurie Allee
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The mixed blessing of deleting my accounts...

Have you cut back on social media and noticed a weird reaction from friends and family?  Now, before I continue, let's get one thing straight: if you are proselytizing digital minimalism to people, then I understand their blowback.  There's nothing more annoying than someone ranting at you to do something a certain way.  Nobody wants a lecture about social media or phones. (They don't want one about politics, religion or child rearing, either.)  

I'm talking about the gut reaction from people when you mention you've quit Facebook or decided to put down your phone.  There's an undeniable defensiveness that comes out, and I think it's so strange.


Here's a sample of the kind of things I regularly hear:   

Unplugged

Come out from behind the screen!

by Laurie Allee

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See my Life Analog introductory post here.

Phone junkie me.

When I first realized I might need to rethink my relationship with technology, I took baby steps.  You know what I mean: I only checked Instagram ONCE an hour instead of repeatedly, every few minutes.  I waited maybe five minutes after getting up to check Twitter, instead of taking the phone into the bathroom with me.  I put the phone on my nightstand instead of cradling it to sleep.  I mean, come on, I didn't have a problem.  I wasn't one of those phone people.  I could actually get through a dinner with someone by just sideways glancing at the phone on the table as notifications came in.  It wasn't like I picked it up.  (Well, not much.) 



I really thought I was just fine...

Towards a life less digitally saturated...

Disconnect to reconnect

by Laurie Allee

Welcome to Life Analog
A simple blog for living IRL

Log off.  Tune in.  Opt out.

Maybe you've felt it too: that weird, sinking feeling that something is now missing.  Despite the constant connectivity, the app for everything, the Prime Same Day delivery, the likes, the swipes... something is gone.

There's a feeling kind of like what you get at the end of a long, drunken party.  Sure, it's been fun.  It's been rowdy and wild and exciting.  But we've all had a bit too much, and our heads are swimming.  People are showing off and picking fights and throwing up.  At this point it would be really nice to get away from all the chaos, sleep it off, and wake up to something a little more grounded.

If you're nodding right now, then stick around.  Life Analog is my place to piece together a more truly connected life than the one I can get checking Twitter.  Join me as I try to find the tangible in a world that is becoming more and more virtual.

Explore the tabs and links for help with digital addiction, smartphone overload and the inevitable social media hangover.  Look around for inspiration and validation from a weary but hopeful fellow traveler.

I'm not suggesting we completely abandon the digital party.  But let's go back and find the analog treasures we lost there.  Let's step out from behind the screen.

I post several times a month.  (More than that would encourage you to keep scrolling!)

You can find out more here.