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.  

Analog Things: Building a Cabin by Hand

Meet Erik Grankvist...modern Viking builder

by Laurie Allee

If you're reading this via email, please click here to see the accompanying video.

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.

When Real Life is Virtual...

by Laurie Allee

If you're reading this via email, please click here to see my accompanying original video.
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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mindlessly sucked into screens, where tech billionaires determine what we see and how we see it, where real life is superseded by social media with everyone corralled into digital echo chambers, crouched behind their highly-filtered avatars.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.