Digital Minimalism, Childhood, & Analog Tech
September 2023 Reflection ~
Hey everyone and welcome to October! We’re now in prime spooky season and I couldn’t be more excited. This is my absolute favorite time of the year from the Sonoran desert weather to the fall flavors to Halloween decorations.
This year, I wanted to take advantage of all the spooky things and pack as many events and activities into my schedule from September 15th - November 1st as my introverted self could stand. I kicked off the season by visiting the 21st Annual Roasted Chile Festival in Tucson, AZ (as we’re in prime chile season) and decorating our patio with spooky decor. I baked a delicious roasted garlic and rosemary artisan loaf and attended Glowing Pumpkins, an artistic jack-o-lantern display at a local botanical garden. My wife and I visited a similar setup in Colorado last year for our 5th wedding anniversary and it was wonderful to revisit something similar this year.
October is packed with plans for pumpkin patches, carving pumpkins and roasting pumpkin seeds, artisan markets, leaf peeping, picnics, hikes, and scary movies. I’m thoroughly looking forward to cultivating so many memories this season and capturing them on camera.
Digital Minimalism
Now that we’re progressing deeply into the autumn season, the desert really feels like it’s slowing down and preparing for winter. In the spring and summer (especially if we get a heavier monsoon season), everything feels like it’s in excess—the desert superbloom is in full view, new migrations and influxes of animals pop up every week, and the sun is so bright and hot. But this morning as I look out my first-floor apartment window, the shadows are stretching over the sidewalk and cinderblock half walls and the sun is just barely waking up at 8:30 am. After a very busy summer, things feel like they’re slowing down.
And perhaps it’s this natural cycle of slowing down that has me side-eyeing different methods to simplify and pair down my own life. I’ve been thinking about all of the areas of my life that feel like a black hole for time and energy. Social media is an obvious culprit, but also thinking about meal complexity, an ever-expanding array of hobbies, and a constant, advertised push for consumerism. This is especially true going into the season of consumerism. From now until January 1st (or really February/March if you consider how many weight loss and fitness programs are peddled after the New Year), there is a constant push to buy more, driving an artificial sense of material need. One thought that’s been consistent this month is how can I simplify my life to regain a sense of control and create moments that are fulfilling rather than draining?
Earlier in September, one of my favorite daily newsletters from The Good Trade shared a link to this company called The Light Phone which embodies (maybe to the extreme) a life of digital minimalism. In stark opposition to massive mainstream tech companies like Meta, Google, Apple, and others, their goal is for you to use their technology as little as possible. This tiny little phone only has a few key tools with none of the anxiety-inducing attributes of standard smartphones like social media, news apps, internet browsers, and other features. It can send texts and make calls, has a music functionality that mimics old-school Zunes and iPods, an alarm, notes, directions, and a calendar. Everything is immensely paired down using an all-black-and-white, e-Reader-style screen without images or other intense visual stimuli. I believe that if Ron Swanson were to purchase a smartphone, this would be it.
While this level of digital minimalism might feel extreme, it’s also incredibly enticing. I’ve commented to my wife many times over the years that I’m so done with all social media and everything to do with smartphones; let’s just get a landline. Looking at this technology scratches a mental itch and sends me into a very nostalgic, day-dream of a life with minimal technology (think late 90s, early 00s technology: records and CDs, Polaroids, landlines, limited computer use, and handwritten letters). I found myself looking at their website and emitting a sigh of relief.
But on the other hand, what new music genres would I miss out on without Spotify? How much extra time would I need to spend on the computer managing my finances? What would I do if I couldn’t look up information while out in public? These questions bring up a sense of FOMO that often redirects me from taking steps in this direction, however appealing it might be at the time. At the same time, how much extra time would I have in the day if I wasn’t scrolling, constantly checking emails, or fiddling around with tech and apps?
You might be thinking: why not apply the same concepts to your current life and tech setup? And I have. I’ve deleted all social media that were breeding anxiety, simplified my phone screen layout, and set an intention to spend as little time looking at screens as possible, but for some reason, after a few months, I started to slowly add social media back. Other times, it happens more quickly—like coming off of a restrictive diet and binging your favorite foods—uploading massive amounts of content and spending far more time than I was prior to the app reduction, just to end in burnout. I know it’s a cycle of addiction that these companies are actively creating and I’m falling victim to it every time. Maybe this is why these types of limited technologies (the Light Phone, physical copies of music and media, and even analog photography) are so enticing—the temptation is no longer there.
Have you adopted any digital minimalism tactics? I’d love to hear what’s worked (or hasn’t worked) for you and your life.
Rekindling a Childlike Nature
Do you remember what it was like to be a kid? To play freely without inhibitions, actively seeking joy and a sense of freedom? With the never-ending tasks and forced productivity of adulthood, I feel like it gets easier to forget those feelings with every extra adult year checked off. It becomes so easy to get lost in a sense of mindless, adult routine, to not seek out adventure.
I’d like to have a moment of remembrance for this precious period of our lives. Below are a few short videos that have rekindled a sense of childlike wonder for me, helping me be mindful of my desire to cultivate childlike joy.
The first is a phenomenon out of Portland, Oregon called The Bike Bus. I have to admit, the first time I watched this I immediately teared up. The level of pure joy that these kids are experiencing is infectious and creates a deep sense of nostalgia for Millennials like me who joined their neighborhood friends in biking to school. However, the scale of this is on another level.
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Created as a way to reduce traffic congestion around the school and help kids be more active, The Bike Bus is creating strong memories for all of the kids involved. They’re learning to appreciate fresh air, connection, and community. I feel like one of the comments under the video summed up the vibe perfectly:
“Imagine it’s 7 am and you feel the brisk morning air as you smile at your best friend pedaling as hard as you can on the bike bus”
It gives me chills.
The second is a short video discussing an article by The Atlantic—What Adults Forget About Friendship (link to a paywall-free version from MSN).
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The article and video combo discuss how childhood friendships are developed around unstructured and unhurried play time. A lack of structure allows for creativity, world creation, and intense bonding that typical, structured adult get-togethers don’t allow. I especially enjoyed this quote from the beginning of the article:
“How creative can you get when the premise is two couples are meeting up for mini golf from 7 to 9 p.m.?”
Akin to improv in the world of theatre, children rely on a dynamic of introducing “an unexpected idea” that requires the other child to riff and make the scenario work. This is high risk for rejection (and possibly why this isn’t continued into adulthood when so much focus is placed on “normal” social interactions), but can create magical results when ideas and personalities mesh.
Even in high school when make-believe dissipates, many teens still spend long stretches of time without an agenda—having lengthy sleepovers without preset activities, meeting up in parks after school and chatting, and exploring the neighborhood or nearby natural area freely and without a plan.
I’ve noticed this continues a bit into college when adults tend to remain surrounded by their peer groups and have more opportunities for natural friend-making. When I was getting my art and technology bachelor’s degree, I spent countless hours in a fabrication lab creating art and wasting time with other students before heading home. After graduating and taking on my first 40-hour-per-week office job, it felt like this peer group connection was stripped away. Everything suddenly had to have a purpose or have some productivity element.
“You tend to enrich your social life when you stop and linger and waste time.”
It seems like many are beginning to realize the limitations of these interactions and are changing what they do with friends either purposefully or by necessity. I’ve seen an uptick of friends running errands together, living together, or cooking meals together, participating in the in-between activities like preparing and cleaning up. I saw these interactions happen often in the small town where I grew up—neighbors would swing by to sit on the porch and talk, bring over fresh berries unannounced, or have barbecues without end times.
These videos made me realize that these childlike moments came to a screeching halt for me as soon as I graduated college. I’ve been so focused on growing a career and stabilizing my income that I’ve let go of taking time to experience these moments. I haven’t ridden a bike in years and my friendship interactions include memo-exchange-like catchups at a restaurant. Why haven’t I called up a friend to go to the farmers market with me or go on a bike ride without a plan or a designated path?
It’s exciting to see adults returning back to these habits and it’s reminded me to incorporate these moments into everyday life. I hope this reminds you of what this feels like and inspires you to create more moments of childlike joy in your own life.
Have you begun incorporating childlike moments of play into your life and friendships? I’d love to hear what you’ve changed and what adventures you’ve taken!
Gravitating Toward Photography
This time of year always makes me nostalgic. Maybe it’s the back-to-school timeline (I was the weird kid who loved school), the cooler fall mornings, or the slower pace. Whatever the reason may be, the fall always has me returning to comfort in all aspects of my life. Perhaps this is why I’m feeling the pull towards my camera and instant photography this season.
I started taking photographs consistently when I was around eleven years old. I had a very poor-quality, Canon point-and-shoot at the time and would edit my photos in Gimp. In high school, I upgraded to a Canon DSLR with a stock lens and took some digital photography classes. In junior year, my grandma gave me her Nikon film camera kit so that I could take a film photography class. The kit came packaged in an old, black canvas camera bag with many compartments and contained multiple lenses, lens filters, a remote shutter release, some old film, and a variety of tools that I had no idea what they were for. Growing up with Canons, I always dreamed of having a Nikon and loved it from the beginning.
The process of developing film and exposing photos in the darkroom is a feeling I can’t compare to anything else. I fell in love with analog photography and the entire chemically process. I went from rapidly taking photos of anything and everything to carefully composing my shots, knowing I only had a few per roll. I haven’t been fortunate enough to take a film photography class or have access to a darkroom since then, but I’ve hung onto her camera in my closet just in case.
In September, I really dove into appreciating and researching analog technologies, photography-related and otherwise. There have been so many interesting new additions to film photography since my high school days of simple darkroom photography. I recently learned about the Kodak Ektar H35, which shoots in half frames, and it completely blew my mind. Polaroid also released their new I-2 which flaunts fully manual controls, expanding the creative possibilities for instant film. I know diehard film photographers are having trouble accepting or justifying the $599 price tag, but I think this is an incredibly fair price for all the features we’re getting. The reviews that I’ve seen of this camera from a few of my favorite analog photography YouTubers have me reorganizing my photography purchase priorities. I’ve been contemplating buying a Polaroid instant camera (after only owning Instax and discovering, disastrously, that you cannot emulsion lift Instax) and this might be the one to make me dive in.
Creatively, I’ve been spread across multiple different mediums for the last few months, exploring different techniques and combining elements from each. However, I think this fall I’ll lean into my nostalgia and devote my creative time consistently to photography. I have old photography books that I was gifted but have never found the time to read, some new instant film techniques to try, and a backlog of photography-related ideas that I’ve jotted down in my Notion from months ago. I think it’s time to resurface these and give them the time that they deserve.
Until next month ✌️